


The Blessing in the Moon

by Zaccari



Category: Alice in Chains
Genre: AU, M/M, Weird Sex, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-30 15:25:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaccari/pseuds/Zaccari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is what you make it, and sometimes, through no fault of your own, it isn't a life at all.</p><p>Then all of a sudden, you're not alone anymore</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blessing in the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Pretend there is a verse where were animals are normal, but not exactly loved and adored by all. This is set in that verse.

~Sean’s POV~

I don't know when consciousness returns. Oddly enough, it very rarely pops up screaming, “It's 2 o'clock, time to come to now!” I just slowly begin to realise it's there, with its ghostly hand on my shoulder, like it's trying to shake me back to the land of the living.

Yes, this is me, mentally telling it to fuck off. Because if what I'll wake up to is living, somebody needs to look up the definition again. It's either me or the rest of the world, but one of us has it seriously wrong.

Consciousness doesn't listen, it never does, and the only thing stopping me from facing reality now is the fact I haven't opened my eyes. Rolling my shoulders, I can feel the film of whatever that is that remains after I shift covering my body. Yes, I know it has a medical term and I never bothered to learn it, goop works for me. It all adds up to the same thing. I need a shower.

Please whoever's listening, let those fuckwits that attempt to run this place have left clean bedding somewhat on time this time. And my laundry would be nice bonus too. Yep, that explains why I'm still laying here. I’m already conditioning myself that I'll be naked and trying to avoid the puddle of goop until the middle of next week.

Whenever that is.

No, think Sean, get a grip here, you know what day it is, think. They will not break you, they aren't allowed, don't given them permission, think.

It's Monday. Sunday night was the last of the full moon this Lunar. It's Monday.

And it's now time to open my eyes.

"Fuck!"

The pallet I'm laying on grew a lump while I was out. A very hairy, bloody, currently human lump.

And a lump that, despite my kind-of scream, doesn't seem to be moving. At all.

Charming. Pushing myself up to a sitting position, I make the major mistake of trying to run my hand through my hair. Fucking goop. My hand now feels like it's superglued to the knots in my hair and getting it loose is going to involve me doing my very best Three Stooges imitation.

Now I'm convinced it's Monday. Even in locked away in an asylum for the terminally hairy, it's out to get me. 

"I hate you too, fucker."

Though the words were barely a whisper, this time the lump moves. It curls further into itself, like some way weird magic trick trying to shrink into nothing.

Opening my mouth, I strive for something above that whisper, but nowhere near a normal talking type volume.

"I didn't mean you, Cousin Itt, I meant Monday."

More curling.

Either he - and please let it be a he - doesn't like my pet name or he doesn’t like my sense of humour, possibly both. Who I am kidding? It’s probably both, but right now I need to shower and I doubt he's going anywhere, so...

"I'm just going to stand up, okay? I'm not going to hurt you, I just need to step over you."

I'd like to pretend I don't know why I'm talking to him like a two year old, all quiet and explaining every move I make, but I know beneath that hair covering him like a quilt, he's naked, and I know he’s still bleeding. Even without seeing the fresh red stains on the sheets I could have guessed that. And since I'm obviously rooming with him, scaring him more is a bad idea, so welcome to my impersonation of gentle.

Just for the record, it's hard to stand with a hand stuck in your hair while you avoid a lump, but I get there, only banging one elbow against the wall, and I muffled that curse quiet nicely even if I do say so myself.

The pallet's not wide, and it's easy enough to step over Cousin Itt. I hope he doesn't have personal space issues because I'm already sleeping on the floor and I sleep on the concrete for no man, or fur ball, or whatever he's gonna turn out to be. Barely two steps later, one of which was actually over some clean linen and clothes, yay team, I'm in the cubicle the state tells us is an en suite.

The state really needs to look into that dictionary thing as well, because their definitions are fucked. Because not only is this an en suite, but by having it shoved in a room barely ten foot square that now houses two grown men, it also makes this place humane. Now that's a fucking magic trick.

I'm tall, but I'm far from built and even I have trouble turning around in here. And we'll forget all about the fact you have to - and yes I do mean have to - trip over the toilet bowl to get to the shower. My hands stuck in my hair here, so I add a bruised shin to my skinned elbow though this time I failed at muffling the curse.

Hey, this guy's gonna be able to hear me take a shit, he might as well get used to my swearing. 

One hand finally juggles the temperature into something I can stand under without freezing my nuts into the region of my kidneys and the race is on. I've got roughly three minutes until the water turns back into ice to firstly un-glue my hand, then de-goop myself, and then I'll be washing my hair under that ice.

Now if you can explain to me why I still keep my hair half way down my back, I'm all ears. Except for my nose. 

We've covered that sense of humour thing, right? Good.

I was right. By the time I'm out of the shower my nuts are in hiding and I'm trying to dry myself on a towel that saw its best times somewhere around 1956.

‘Humane’ is another word they need to work on the definition of.

The towel scratches against my skin and doesn't sop up half of the water, so it's easier just to give up, finally looping the damn thing over my shoulders. Here’s hoping it catches enough of the drips from my hair that my jeans are at least half way dry when I finally get them on.

Yep, walking back out into the room, after adding another fucking bruise on my leg thanks to the toilet, stark naked. The lump might as well get used to that, too. There's a locker in the corner opposite the pallet, which is supposed to house our 'personal effects.' It's where I keep my underwear.

Looking around, I can't see anything more than the clean linen and extra clothes for the lump, so I'm guessing this'll be where he keeps his underwear, too.

Light travellers, both of us.

My boxers are a pain in the ass to get on, but only because I'm still wet, and the jeans are even more fun. I can't do my one legged dance of a thousand idiots today either, I'm afraid of stepping on the lump. Grabbing a hairbrush and a shirt from the locker, I start rubbing the towel over my hair. It doesn't do a great deal, but at least the shirt won't stick to my skin. Grabbing my hair to one side, I slip in the warm flannel. It's old, it's worn, but it still smells faintly like I did when I had a life. 

Yes, I coddle my shirt. Deal with it.

Besides, the first rule of shape shifting: You know when it's gonna happen. Get naked or have very few clothes. I already had very few clothes before I learnt that rule and I'll baby the only flannel shirt I have left if I want to.

Time to speak to the lump again.

"Cousin Itt? I need to change the bedding. It has my goop and your blood all over it. But before I do that, I need to look at you, see how badly you're hurt."

How the fuck did he just make himself smaller?

"Please? If you die on me, who the fuck knows when they'll remove the body, and the smell of rotting flesh tends to put me off my food a little."

You know, I don't think my sense of humour is ever going to be appreciated for the gift it truly is.

Crouching down onto all fours, I try to sink my head into the thin, wafer-like mattress that separates Lumpy from the concrete floor. I'm aiming to get my head lower than his, which is damn near impossible, and I'm hoping my head is somewhere close to his. But with all that hair, I could be millimetres from kissing his ass and who'd know?

"I don't know your name, but I'm Sean. I promise to any god that you care to name, I will not hurt you. But if you let me see you, there's a chance I might be able to help heal you. So please, let me look."

I think the ball of human relaxed an inch or two. Then again, I think I've been known to hallucinate too. 

"I'm not going to touch you, okay? So you need to stretch out a little. Keep your eyes shut. It might help, and it sure can't hurt."

I don't know if that whimpering mewl is a yes, a no, or a fuck off, and while I'm never going to be named the saint of patience, I'm a stubborn prick. So this is me laying here, waiting.

The whimpering gets a little louder, breaking only with pain as he slowly unfurls. Every time a muscle moves, he chokes back most of the sound until he's gagging on it.

"Shhhh, just let it out or I'll be cleaning up vomit as well as goop and blood and to be honest, I'm a suck shit housewife. We don't even have a rug for me to sweep it all under."

As two legs appear, then two arms, the sound doesn't get louder, but when he finally stretches out on his stomach, it's constant, and it's riddled with tears.

"You've done it, Lumpy, you've done good. I have to move your hair now, okay? It's just gonna be one hand at the base of your skull. Nothing more, I promise."

Finally sitting back up and onto my heels, my right hand scoops his hair off his back.

"Fuckkkkkkkkk."

I don't even bother trying to conceal the horror in my voice, there's still enough human in me that I can't. Sweet Janus, why isn't he screaming? He's still crying, but the tears are mostly silent. All he really lets loose is the odd wet sniffle.

Forget rotting flesh putting me off my food, this'll work too. His back is pink ribbons of outer flesh separated by the slashing into the deep red flesh of muscle that looks way too much like raw hamburger for it to belong on a human body. Add in the oozing blood and you know exactly why by the time my eyes reach his ass, I’m swallowing back bile. There's ten perfect claw-sized puncture wounds, five on each cheek, and I just wish I could say the fresh blood still trickling from the cleft of his backside down onto the blankets surprises me. But I'm not. I keep my eyes moving, knowing if I look away, I'll never go back and the part of my brain that hasn't hit overload notes the claw marks that scar his inside thighs.

I've seen enough. More than enough and all I want to do right now is go hurl any food I've eaten in the last week.

It was all a joke before, but it's not now. The only reason Cousin Itt's not dead is that the Were that attacked him was into playing. He liked his toys to know what was going on, fight back, make it fun. Interactive playthings on a level most of us are too sane to contemplate.

"Lumpy, I'm going to have to clean you. Try and stop the bleeding and the infection. I can't do that without touching you, and I'm sorry. Before I do though, I've got to ask you, is your stomach and chest anything like your back?"

I'm asking the question even though I'm pretty sure I know the answer already, and the slight shaking of his head from side to side is the answer I'd expected. He's alive, so of course it's no.

"Next question, do you know what kind of Were attacked you?"

His head bobs this time, but there are still no words. That's a small bonus, at least. If I can't smell the beast on him once we get the scent of violence gone, he'll be able to tell me what version of Wild Kingdom we'll be playing out when the next full moon rises.

Is this fun yet?

I'm the one ignoring the possibility his voice is something he'll never regain, yes I am.

"Lumpy, you know that old saying, 'this is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you?' It's bullshit, this is gonna be a big fucking hurt, but it's got to be done, okay? I'm just going to go get some water. I'd tell you not to move, but even I'm not that redundant."

Going back into the closet-come-bathroom, I'm grateful I can at least spare my shins the toilet bowl again, as the basin's in this corner. No, thought isn't something that went into the planning of this hell hole, why do you ask? But still, I fill a small bowl with water that would be luke warm if it was another 10 degrees hotter and then grab a bottle of peroxide from a hole in the wall that would be a cabinet if they allowed us to have the mirrored glass that should make up the door. Because they wouldn't want us to kill ourselves, now would they?

How do you spell hypocrite again?

Tipping the foul-smelling liquid into the water I can't help thinking Cousin Itt's going to hate me for this. All of this. But at least he'll be alive to hate me. I fucking hope.

Two steps later, I'm back at the pallet and placing the bowl of water beside it. I can kneel here and still lean over to the locker. My hand burrows toward to bottom of the metal box. I know what I'm looking for; my eyes don't need to help.

Palming what I find, then quickly shoving it into my pocket, I sit back up beside Cousin Itt. My pillowcase is still kind of clean and I know there's a spare, so, I guess that's what I'll be using to tend to his back.

Soaking half off it into the water-peroxide mix, it's time for the games to begin.

"I'm going to touch you now, Lumpy, just below your neck. It's gonna hurt."

Nah, you think, Kinney?

At the first touch of the wet cloth, his head rears back, his mouth wide open and his fingers clawing wildly, trying to knot in the sheets below him.

And he doesn't so much as squeak. It's like wherever he is now, there just isn't a sound that a human can make that will justify the pain consuming him.

My free hand hovers over his head, stopping an inch or so from his tangled hair.

"More touching coming, Lumpy."

As one hand smooths the wet cloth down the crevasses in his back, over and over until what little water’s left in the bowl is bright pink, the other strokes over his skull. For no other reason than that it settles me and I'm hoping against hope it might distract him for the odd second here and there.

When his back is as clean as I can get it, I have to move south.

"Cousin Itt? I, ahhh, I'd give anything not to have to say this now, but, you, umm, you need to spread your legs so I can clean you there. I'm just gonna go get some clean water."

If the only way I can give him dignity is to leave the room while he moves, I'm gonna do it in a heartbeat.

When I get back, his legs are wide enough for me to reach what I need to and his head, where it's pillowed on his folded arms, is completely covered by his hair.

Kneeling between his calves, it's all I can do to mutter "Touching," before cleaning the thankfully now-dried blood staining his thighs. My touch is rougher than it needs to be, but I can't do gentle as well as fast, so I'm just going for fast.

I have no doubt we're both glad when I'm finished and I move back to the side, my hands gently pushing at his thigh until his legs close enough that they're almost touching. I really can't imagine how much he's hurting right now. Or maybe I can, and I'd just rather not. One of us needs to be thinking straight right now.

I wouldn’t be anybody's first choice but, lucky Lumpy, I'm his only choice.

Poor bastard.

"That's it, Lumpy. You're as clean as I can make you. But it's going to last all of thirty seconds if we don't do something else."

The 'something else' will also heal the injury that I won't humiliate him by mentioning out loud.

My hand goes into my pocket, pulling the silver bladed switch blade knife from it as I lay down again, close enough to Cousin Itt that he can feel my warmth, but not touching without permission. Again I press my head into the mattress, making me lower than him. He might not realise what I'm doing exactly, but just in case the beast growing inside him does, I'm gonna do it anyway.

"You need blood to heal, Cousin Itt, and mine’s the only one on the menu tonight. So if you could move enough hair to give me a clue as to the location of your mouth, I'd be grateful enough not to stick my finger up your nose or something." 

Long, callused fingers move a chunk of hair behind one ear, revealing a still-closed eye, darkish skin coarse with a dark shadow of facial hair, and lips that resemble a shed snakeskin.

Gorgeous, he ain't.

This is as awkward as all fuck to do and still remain below him, but moving to my back I manage to bring the knife to the heel of my left palm. This takes a little building up to, so for a second or two the knife just rests against my flesh.

"S-silver?"

The stuttered word snaps my eyes back to his face. There's one dark, almost fathomless eye open now, focusing off somewhere into a distance that only he can see.

"Yeah, Lumpy, it's silver. I won't bleed enough to feed you otherwise."

The eye shuts.

"Kill me."

Why me? Why the fuck me? Do I look like I have a clue what the fuck to do here? Because if I do, please, for fuck's sake, look again!

"I've just spent ten minutes hosing you down with peroxide and you want me to kill you now? Dude, your timing sucks."

His mouths opens again and his lips split, spilling more blood from his body, blood that he can't afford to lose by the way. But I'll be screwed if I'm gonna give him another chance to ask for his death.

"I'm not going to kill you. Do whatever you need to deal with that fact."

Slicing deep into my flesh, I wince at the burn of the blade as it drags along to the heel of my palm, before ever so delicately shoving the flowing cut into his mouth.

"Suck on that."

Not sensitive? Me? Go fucking figure.

The new beast within him has instinct, though, and he's sucking at the cut even as I'm sitting up, letting gravity and biology help the blood flow. From here I can see his back start to knit together. By the time the cut has healed itself, the marks on his back have aged to that fleshy shine of scars that are healing, even when you know the mind is far from it.

No more blood, not from him, and not today at least. He'll need to be fed again. Later.

Preferably after I've had food, because my head is spinning.

Letting the wall hold me up, I slip the knife back into my pocket. I'd put it back in the locker, but, oddly enough, I don't trust Cousin Itt.

Fuck, the prick's asked me to kill him and he never even told me his name. Damn, do I feel used.

"Okay, Lumpy, bed linen now. Yes, I know, but if you use your imagination, it is too a bed." I'd bring up a shower, but I've already had one cold one this morning and he isn't capable of standing by himself right now, so it'll wait.

One blanket gets laid on the floor, waiting for him to roll onto it, which he does as well as the curling thing again. Then it takes me all of two minutes to strip and re-make the pallet. He moves to crawl back, but my hand on his side stops him.

I forgot to warn him, so he flinches like my hand is acid burning into his flesh.

"Cousin Itt, the blood helped the healing start, but in a round about way, it made us Pard too. And the healing will improve if you lay with Pard, which, sorry, means more touching." 

The lump now is smaller than it ever was before.

"No. Whatever you're thinking, no. Yes, naked is better, but even I'm not that insensitive. If I help, do you think you can get dressed?"

I think he nods. His hair moves anyway and that's good enough for me.

Grabbing a T-shirt and boxers from the pile they left for him, we start the game of dress the lump. It's kind of slow and probably similar to dressing an infant - like I'd know - but his muscles are far from healed and he's doing the best he can. By the time we're finished, he's shaking from the effort, the cold and shock. The blankets won't be enough to keep him warm.

Slipping the shirt from my shoulders, I help him move enough to get it on before I button it almost to the neck.

"You look good in flannel, Lumpy."

I pick up whatever blankets I can reach and wrap them around him into some sort of very constricting cocoon before pulling my now-bound lump up between my thighs, his back to my stomach and my calves draping over his. 

"More touching, Lumpy, deal."

My hands come up to his hair, pulling it away from his face so my fingers can soothe over his temples.

"Sleep, Lumpy. Sleep and heal. I'm not going anywhere, though I have a date for the opera a week from next Thursday, so try to be conscious by then, okay?"

"Mike" is what he says before his body sags into unconsciousness.

"Nice to meet you, Mike. Like I said before, I'm Sean."

~*~

I know we've talked before, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd beam me up now, Scotty.

But it's been three days. Three fucking days. I feel like I'm going steady without the fringe benefit of being able to stick my hand up somebody's skirt. Or down somebody's pants, I'm not all that fucking fussy to be honest. Though right about now, even a hole in the wall with sharp edges would make a nice change from my own hand.

Yes, I am fully aware I'm dangerously close to whining like a two year old and I am very aware that even if I could get off the bed, there's fuck all to do in a room with no furniture. But I could pace the three and a bit steps it take me get from wall to wall, drum on the foot locker, something.

Three days.

That first day Lumpy had only been out half an hour or so when the first of the science experiments they call meals and try to feed us three times daily arrived.

And guess what? They actually remembered to bring two of them. Lucky us. Not that it mattered to Lumpy. Out cold, remember? But I wasn't gonna complain. What little fitness and muscle mass I ever had is basically shot to hell without me having to share my food as well.

Anyway, since Mike--who whether he likes it or not is now terminally stuck with Lumpy--was still perfecting his 'I am a speed hump' thing, I figured it was safe to move a couple of feet and eat. Even if thinking has never been a strong point of mine, I don't normally fuck it up quite that badly.

It took a minute for the shaking to be visible under that pile of blankets and hair, but at the three minute mark the shudders were so violent that he looked like he was positioned on the edge of his very own, personal earthquake fault.

Maybe, in a way, he was.

I ate the rest of my breakfast slop with one arm curled around a lump that took two hours for the last tremor to leave it.

Wanna guess how I've eaten every meal since then? Then wanna try imagining how much fun I've had going to the bathroom? My knees are going to be black and blue until I'm 257 at the rate I'm going. And although I'm gone for, like, thirty seconds max, the lump still curls around me like I have a Siamese twin somebody forgot to tell me about when I get back to the pallet

Why did I have to feed him and make him my Pard again? Oh yeah, the dead thing. Smell bad.

Sean Kinney: werepanther and big fucking pussy.

So I guess it's pretty obvious that Lumpy has no personal space issues. I, on the other hand, am working on a mighty fine set, with matching lace curtains and everything. For six months this room has consisted of me and my voice. Nothing else. The fuckwits that run this place don't speak. They can't work here and have brain cells, that'd make them over qualified. Now there's this lump of male that won't let me go and I don't care if he is my Pard, I don't fucking know him from Adam and he ain't putting out and fuck it, I smell!

Correction. We both fucking stink!

It's been three days. Time to rise and shine, Lumpy.

Mike.

He makes some kind of noise as I push him back, and stand. You're not listening, Kinney, got that? You're going to go freeze your ass off in the shower and then you're going to bitch about the fact you've got nothing to wear and can't do a thing with your hair.

My hair.

Oh fuck, I never did brush it last time I had a shower.

"Lumpy, you're a fucking pain in the ass, you know that?"

He doesn't answer, and you know what? I don't care.

And that's what I keep telling myself as I throw my clothes over my shoulder, stub my toe on the toilet trying to look out for my knees, and stand under the shower that even with nothing but the hot water on is still cold enough to give a guy a shrinkage complex.

It's the mantra in my head right up until I hear one word, screamed loud enough to curdle already- gone-bad blood.

"Randy!"

It takes me all of ten second to decide I can't let him scream like that, though the reason of not wanting to deal with the guards might not get me nominated for roomie of the year.

Please don't ask me why I'm still dripping wet with shampoo in my hair when I get to back to the pallet. No good can come from it.

Kneeling down beside him, my hand moves to catching his rocking shoulder, attempting to hold him still because what good would shaking him do? I can't shake him worse than he is already, not with out killing him, anyway.

"Mike!"

Tears roll down his face, fuck he's a mess, and all he does is mumble two words over and over, muddled together while he rocks.

"Randysaferandysaferandy."

"Mike! Wake the fuck up! Now!"

Well, if his screaming doesn't bring the keystone Neanderthals, mine sure will.

Leaning down, I grab a handful of hair and rest my mouth against his ear. He's still when I speak this time.

"You're having a nightmare, you're safe, now wake up. It's Sean, remember? Tall dude you asked to kill you?" Letting go of his hair and sitting back up, I add, "I'm going to go finish my shower now."

I have no clue if he's awake when I head back to the en suite, but the yelling's stopped, so colour me happy.

There's a face looking at me when I get back this time. A whole face! Two eyes, a nose, mouth, the works.

Gorgeous, he ain't.

I'm back at the locker, grabbing clean underwear and more jeans. The T-shirt will wait until my hair's done.

"Where am I?"

Okay, not the question I was expecting, but at least it's one I can answer.

"The Alexandria Care House."

Umm, gee, I think I sounded a might bitter then. Bad me.

"Bullshit!"

My boxers are around my knees when I look at him. Maybe he was more fun unconscious after all.

"I'm the one that's been here for six months, sunshine. I think I know where I am."

In hell.

He opens his mouth again.

"Listen fucker, you stink. We'll argue after you shower. In there," I point toward our closet with running water, "you will find all the comforts of home, if you're a dwarf and home is a hole in the ground. Go enjoy them."

His mouth opens. Again.

"That wasn't a request, Lumpy. It was me pulling the 'I was here first, I'm bigger, I win' trump card out of my ass. Go fucking shower."

His eyes spit fire at me, but I guess I look feral enough for him to listen to me and he sulks his way toward the en suite.

He curses as he hits his knee and yelps when the water doesn't warm, and I sit dragging a brush through the knots currently making up my hair.

When he reappears in the doorless doorway, dripping wet and trying in vain to dry himself, I just point again to the pile of clothes and few toiletries on the floor, then go back to my tangled mess.

He disappears again.

I'd tell him he can't get dressed in there, not unless he was a circus act before he was attacked, but suddenly I'm not feeling all that charitable. And for crying out loud, he's can't be that big a moron not to see the obvious for himself, can he?

Three 'fucks' and a 'you prick' later, things go quiet. I guess from the sound of running water his trying to shave, or brush his teeth or something.

This is me, not caring.

I'm braiding my hair when he appears next, still naked and trying to somehow hide himself as he dresses.

"I'm not looking, Mike, and even if I was, it's not like I haven't seen it all before. You were kind of naked when they dumped you here, remember?"

He's ignoring me, cool. I just pick the brush up off the pallet and skate it across the floor to his feet. Leaning back against the wall, I let my eyes close. I'm tired. I want to sleep. He may have been unconscious, I haven't been that lucky.

"Throw your dirty clothes into that hatch, to your right. But not the shirt, the shirt stays."

I open my eyes to find him dressed and just in time to see everything he was wearing, my shirt included, fall from his arms into the laundry chute.

"You fucking cunt! I said not the shirt!"

"And who died and appointed you wise being of the universe? It's just fucking shirt, I want to know where I am!"

It seems that Lumpy's got balls. Well, I've got fucking claws. I win again.

"I've told you, you're in Alexandria's Care House. You're in a fucking asylum, Mike."

"Bullshit."

You know I'm trying hard to resist the urge to pound him, or my head, into the brick wall. I figure that either way I can't lose, I'll be alone again.

"You keep saying that, Mike. What's bullshit about it? Let me guess, when you came here, you saw the nice rooms, with beds, and carpet and cable TV. You saw tasteful paint jobs, rec rooms, and races where the weres can run that look something like the jungle ride at some theme park. And you saw the lab, where they work so hard toward a cure, didn't you Mike?"

He's trying to back himself through a concrete wall. Wet hair flicks, like some demented sheep dog as his head shakes. His voice breaks as he speaks.

"No, I was hurt...but Randy told me..."

"Randy lied. Or they lied to Randy, six of one, half dozen of the other. Either way, this is it. One room, four walls, a door that never gets opened and two holes in the wall. One of those delivers what they loosely call food three times day, laundry and various other basics once a week. The other, which you just fucking chucked my shirt into, is where things go and are never seen again! You've seen our bathroom, let me introduce to the bed that we share and the footlocker. Guess what? We share that too. This is life here, Mike. There is nothing else. They leave us here until we kill each other, or go insane and then they can legally put us down. Are you listening, Mike? They put us down, like dogs with rabies."

He's hunching down now, trying to hide again and I know I'm not helping, but I can't seem to stop. Shifting to all fours, I start to crawl toward him, my voice getting softer with each step, more and more like a hiss with every inch I take toward him.

"Grow a brain, Mike. They threw you in here with me while I was sleeping off a shift. You were bleeding from a back in shreds, from claw marks carved down your thighs, from your ass where you'd been raped. Do you think they cared if you lived? Do you understand that you would be dead if I didn't feed you? Not once you ungrateful prick, but three times. Three times I drew that fucking silver blade across my palm for you."

Brown eyes lift up to meet mine and they're so deep I could lose myself trying to find the bottom and the soul in them.

"I never asked for anything from you, so don't try to fucking guilt me."

My face pushes forward into his, my eyes close enough to his to make my vision of him blur.

"You asked me to kill you, Mike. You thought Randy had put you into the 'We are beautiful and weres will save the world' rest home and you still wanted me to kill you, Mike. Why?"

"There's been a mistake. Randy wouldn't leave me here, not in a place like this, I know he wouldn't. Not Randy. Not Randy."

Poor bastard. At least I when I woke up, I knew I was being dumped. I knew I was expected to do the right thing and kill myself so that their god could have mercy on my sinning soul.

How else do you think I got the silver knife? It was a going away present.

From my father.

Okay, I'm feeling guilty now. Why is it that, given three options of how to handle shit, I always pick the exactly wrong one?

I start to move backward a little, taking my head from right under his nose.

"Mike-"

"No! No, you're lying, Randy could tell, he'd know. He wouldn't leave me here, not to die, not to hurt, he wouldn't. He could tell. No. No! NO! GET ME OF HERE! GET ME-"

My eyes bleed into polished topaz as I pounce, wrapping my hand over his mouth and pulling him to the floor with me. Throwing what power and scent one guy can muster over him, the hand not covering his mouth wraps around his waist, one leg gets throwing over his, stopping him from making too much noise, but not from kicking me.

"Listen to me, Lumpy. You will not make noise, you cannot bring the pricks that run this place into this room. Do you wanna see the scars they left me with when I thought making them notice me was a good idea? The ones circling my wrists and ankles, where they wrapped me in silver chains that were just loose enough to let me shift? Do you want hear about the way I screamed when I couldn't resist the moon's pull? Do you want to know how I woke up crying, wondering if I could move enough to crawl to that locker and slit my own throat? How I listened to them laugh outside that door when it happened again the next night, and the night after that. Three nights, Lumpy, three nights I screamed and cried and they laughed. I woke up after that final night with the chains gone, my hands and feet nearly severed from the rest of me but I wasn't broken. You know why? They had to get my parents permission to lock me in here, but they haven't got my permission to turn me into an animal. I am not a thing that needs to be tamed and whipped, I am me, Sean Kinney. And I'll still be that when the day comes and I can walk out of here, laughing long and hard at the pricks I'll be leaving behind."

He stopped struggling when the flow of piss poor power hit him, but he didn't collapse into my arms until I mentioned my parents. He didn't start crying until I mentioned leaving.

I'm not letting him go just yet. I won't be thinking about why, that's a track best left un-walked, so I just hold him down and listen, waiting, praying for anything other than the sound of foot falls.

You know, all in all, I don't think I could have handled that worse if I'd tried. All the gods and goddess we have and not one of them has the power to come down and hit you over the head with a broom when you're making a cock up of everything.

Maybe I could talk to their union about a job.

"Mike? I'm gonna let you go now. Crawl over to the pallet, I won't move, for what's it worth, I promise I won't. Just please, no more screaming."

My arms flop down and he moves quickly enough that it has to sting still healing muscles. I can feel the hairbrush near my fingertips and I push it in his direction again.

"Do your hair, if you want to keep it as long as you have it now."

I'm giving hairdressing tips. Scotty, the beaming up thing, if you don't mind. Now, please.

The silence is as smothering as the concrete under my back is cold. I made this mess, I have to be the one to fix it, I guess.

"What did you mean when you said Randy would know, Mike?"

Okay, not what I meant to ask, but hey, maybe it's better than 'Is Randy your lover?'

Not that it matters, because he's silent so long that I doubt he's gonna answer me anyway.

"Mi-"

A quite voice cuts across my exactly as soft one.

"Randy's faerie. Pixie to be exact. Well, pixie and some other stuff. He has these...he can feel magic. Why didn't he know...I was so hurt, so scared and so was Randy, we didn't know what to do. They tell you this place will help, they told Randy...why didn't he know?"

Fuck me, talk about the blind leading the blind. Leading them up the garden path, out the gate, and under a truck.

"I don't know, Lumpy. But if I had to guess, I'd say your mutt pixie's powers are… questionable at best. And if they have runes here to cast whatever over this place, they'd be some pretty kick ass ones. I don't think your Randy had a chance to know things weren't what they seemed."

At least I'm praying he didn't, because it would be nice if one of us had somebody on the outside that still cared if we lived or died.

Nice to pretend.

One arm moves up to cover my eyes. Fuck, I'm tired.

"What's a Pard?"

Sleep just flew out the fucking window.

"Mike, do you know anything about weres?"

Do I look like a lycanthrope how-to manual?

"Umm, no. Wolves maybe, but I'm not going to be a wolf. Are you?"

Pushing myself back up right, I open my eyes to find Mike has bent his head forward and is brushing waist-length hair that's now knot free.

"No, not wolf. First things first, what kind of cat will you shift into?"

A quick whip of his shoulder and the riot of curls flicks back over his head and down his back.

Sweet fuck.

Those eyes nail me again. They want to suck me into them, make me share things I don't have within me to share any more.

"How do you know it was a cat?" He's snarling. I fucked up again.

"I could smell that much on you after I cleaned you up. Don't look at me like I violated something. You all but climbed up my ass after I fed you."

And I'm yelling. Well, this up and down, back and forth, snarl and whimper shit is just a barrel of laughs, isn't it?

Because no sooner have I said the words then he's sinking back into himself, curling ringlets around his fingers.

"I'm sorry Mike, okay? I'm tired and this isn't easy on me either. I'm going to get pissy and have temper tantrums. I wish I could promise you that I won't, but I can't lie to you like that. But the one promise I will make you is that as bad as bark gets, I won't bite."

Not unless you beg nicely.

Fucking stop that, Kinney!

I can see him reset his spine, lifting his head. I was the one that said ‘Gorgeous he ain't,’ wasn't I?

"Panther. It was a panther."

Holy fuck, I did make us Pard.

Something must play across my face, because he's raising one eyebrow like he expects me to say...something.

"You turn into something that eats panthers?"

My heads shakes and the laugh that escapes my mouth is more than a little rueful.

"No, sorry, not into cannibalism."

He doesn't get the reference, which is probably just as well right now.

"Back to your first question, Lumpy, a Pard is like a cat version of a wolfpack. They have this hierarchy, an Ulfric, Lupa, like a king and queen, all of that, and in a normal situation a Pard would have that too. You'd be taken in, sponsored, taught the lay of the land. I was never brought into a Pard, I woke up from my first shift here. I doubt you'd have lived long enough and besides, the were that played with you wasn't big on responsibility. Without your Randy, you'd be a dot on the graph that is this weeks murder count chart."

My eyes latch onto his, making sure he's watching me, paying attention. He needs to understand what comes next.

"I made us family, Mike. Our Pard is you and me, whether you like it or not," and it'll probably be not, "we're always going to linked. Separate isn't something either of us is going to cope with real well any more."

He's still watching me.

I'm tired.

So tired.

"Does that sleep thing work for you as well as me?"

"What sleep thing, Lumpy?"

"Sleeping with Pard helping you, comforting you. Like it did me."

Tired.

"We're equals in this mess, Mike. What goes for you, goes for me too."

The heels of my palms scrub up over my cheeks, drilling into my eye sockets, the scar on one hand rough against the soft flesh of my eyelids. When my hands drop, Mike's there, his back against the wall and his arms open, legs spread just wide enough to allow one skinny were to crawl between them. 

So fucking tired.

Before I know it I'm crawling again, toward him, moving between his legs, bringing my mouth to his and licking at his lips in submission, dropping my head to let the top of it rub against his cheek bone. Letting my head slide downward, coming to rest on his thigh, feeling wiry muscles beneath my face.

My body just collapses, staying where it falls.

There are fingers in my hair, just scraping over my scalp. I can feel the soft curls of his hair touching my nose as he bends down.

"Sleep, Sean. It's your turn to rest now. I'll make sure the concierge gets your tux ready for the opera." 

My head tries to burrow further into his thigh. It's comfortable. Almost welcoming.

Almost home.

"I'm sorry about the shirt."

Tired.

I want to answer, so I try.

"S’okay."

Fingers rub over my temple.

Sleep.

~*~

I'm warm. I'm hard. I'm in so much fucking trouble. I know I fell asleep with my head in Mike's lap, but somehow, while I was out, we both squirmed our way into a position where I'm barely an inch or so away from humping his thigh.

If I told him it was a pard thing, do you think he'd let me do it anyway?

I so need sex with something other than my hand and there's so little chance of that happening.

Was Randy his lover?

Not moving my leg from where it's thrown over his thighs, I prop my head up on one hand, looking down into the face I proclaimed not gorgeous

And he's not. Not exactly.

His face is lax with sleep, but there's still a ring of almost black bruising around his eyes, the remains of a furrow in his forehead. And the colour in his skin just makes the shadows all that much more violent, even as he rests. But his face is more than just light and shadow. It's the play of the hurt look in his eyes when he thought his Randy had betrayed him, it's the look of gentle acceptance he wore waiting for me to come use him as a pillow.

And if that's the kind of fucking sap I'm starting to sprout. I need to think seriously about drilling that hole in the wall to fuck, because my sex drive is turning my brain into Swiss cheese. Or maybe a nice soggy Brie.

"Whatcha doing?"

Blinking the face below me back into focus, I wish I hadn't. It's spilt with this smile, this glowing amazing smile that changes every millimetre of his features. The shadows don't leave. Instead, they become secrets you have to find the answer too.

Shoot me now. Do you know how hard is to jerk off quietly?

"Deciding."

Don't ask what, please don't fucking ask...

"Deciding what?"

Saved by the clank of metal on metal that means lunch has arrived.

"Whether or not it's safe to let you eat this shit yet, or if I'll be feeding you again."

His eyes drop the hand my chin is resting on, like he knows it's the one that bares the mark that saved his life.

"I think I can cope with the food today."

"Sure you could, Lumpy, if food was what they served us."

His smile gets a little wider and I get something back I thought I'd lost, despite my proud words earlier.

Hope.

Somehow, and I truly have no fucking idea how, we're gonna get out of here before you lose that smile, Mike. Oh yes we fucking are. 

"I think I can live a little dangerously. I might as well get used to it, I'm going be with you a while, right?"

Do you think he'd go for that leg-humping thing after all?

"Just a life time or two, Lumpy, so yeah, a little while. Okay unidentifiable lumps in please-don't-tell-me-sauce it is."

"Sean?"

His only answer is my eyes widening a little.

"I can't move with your leg pinning me down."

Well, I no longer have a hard on to hide because all my blood just flooded into my face. I haven't been this colour since I was thirteen and my mother walked in on...never mind. Snatching my leg back, I roll over and away enough to bury my head face first into the pallet.

A hand moves my braid out of the way and I feel Lumpy's breath on my neck, hot and moist, seconds before he speaks.

"I never said I didn't like it. I'm just hungry is all."

Then he's gone.

I can vaguely hear him moving around, retrieving our muck. I'll just be taking this opportunity to give myself a verbal red-hot poker up the ass. If I discount the fact he might not be into guys, and even if he is, I still have to wipe out the fact his pixie might be his lover. Magically making all that go poof, one thing still remains.

He was raped four nights ago! What the fuck are you thinking, Kinney?

Later on, you idiot, when he sleeps again, you can go have a nice cold shower and jerk off until your dick is red and raw, but until then, this stops, now! Are you listening to me?

I can feel myself starting to get hard again. I'll take that as a no, shall l?

"Sean?"

Lifting my head, I just look at him. He's so-

"Your, umm, your..."

He waves his hand at the tray he's put beside me.

"My umm is about right. If you're hungry, Mike, eat both."

"But you-"

I lay my head back down, but this time it's my ear pressed against the mattress. So I can watch him.

"I'm fine. Honestly. After all, I've been your meals as well as mine for the last couple of days. It's cool."

He's trying to not eat like he's famished, but he is, so it's a battle he'd well and truly lost before he started it. He'll learn not to sweat the small shit. I'll hate it, but he'll learn it. 

There's a thought trying to crawl into my brain, about what it would have been like to meet him anywhere other than here. I know better, I know I can't let it take hold, but for a second or two...no. I can't do that to either of us, this is what we've got, this is what we fucking deal with.

"What do I...?"

He does the hand-flapping thing at the trays again.

"Stick 'em back in the hole. The fuckwits will take them away eventually."

And that's exactly what he does, as I move sit back against the wall, pulling one leg up to try and hide what's still kind of obvious. I know that sooner or later, we're gonna have to have 'the talk,’ but I'll be the one voting for later. 2006 is free, I think.

Lumpy must have found the plastic mugs in the bathroom, because he hands me a cup of water before sitting down, his back to the en suite wall, his legs pinned together between my splayed ones.

I'm not expecting him to speak, so it really shouldn't surprise me when he does.

"You don't like the people that run this place that much do you?"

"By calling the guards here people you're giving them qualities they don't possess, Lumpy. Nobody deserves to be locked in a ten foot square room and forgotten about until the stench is so bad you have to do something about it."

Does he realise the denim he's rubbing at covers the soft scarring of his inside thigh?  
  
"Mike?"

His hand stops moving but clenches into his thigh.

"Whoever attacked you was a monster, first and second. Human or were, it wouldn't have made any difference. Him being were just meant he didn't have to carry a knife. I don't have all the answers, I wish I did, because I have some fuckers of some questions. But one thing I have worked out, being a were can't turn you into something you didn't already have in you as a human."

"So you were this charming, politely spoken, grumpy bastard even before you were t-turned."

I can almost see him trying to remove the word from the air between us and shove them back into his mouth. I like him with a bit of lip.

"Yeah, kind of. All that and a world class piece of ass too." 

Pond-deep brown eyes travel upward from my toes, over my legs, still moving, darting over my chest. By the time he meets my stare, he's back to smiling.

Then he's not.

"Sean...what did you mean when you said they needed your parents’ permission?"

It's 2006 already?

One hand rubs over my face and through my hair. I so don't want to do this.

Nervous words start to spill from Lumpy's mouth and his gaze plummets to his lap.

"I'm sorry. I-"

I have to do this.

"It's okay, Lumpy." Leaning forward, I grab hold of one of his ankles, making my hold tight enough that he has to look at me. "It's okay. Pard, remember? Family."

Concentrate on the story you have to tell, Kinney, not on the fact it'd be easier to tell curled up in his lap. Letting him go and sitting back up, I resist the urge to throw myself into the wall, just to have a physical pain that'll replace the one I can feel contracting around my gut.

"My parent's left me here, but unlike your Randy, they didn't need the runes of illusion. They knew where they were leaving me and they just didn't care. They thought that by making it as hard as they could for me to exist, I'd do the honourable thing with the silver knife my father slipped into my shirt pocket as he hugged me good bye. I should have known, realised something wasn't right. That second would be the only time in my memory I can remember having his arms around me."

My eyes close, and thankfully Lumpy doesn't fill the silence with anything more than his soft breathing.

"That knife I saved you life with? It's the one I was supposed to take mine with. In the eyes of my parents and the god they chose to worship, I'm an abomination and lycanthropy was the sign they'd been begging for that it was okay to forget about me, that I was beyond redemption and no longer worthy of their love. Which was a really neat trick, because I don't remember them loving me in the first place."

Mike's moving. Opening my eyes, I expect to find him pulling himself back against the wall he was leaning on. Instead, he's back on all fours, his hair not covering his face that much that I can't see his eyes, locked on me.

My head shakes, stopping him mid motion.

"Just... just stay there... just let me get this out, please, Lumpy."

He stops, I breathe. I can do this.

"I'm bi. My lover, my male lover, is the reason I have lycanthropy."

He nods, I don't breath. Then he shrugs, and continues to crawl between my legs, finally coming to rest with his head face up on one thigh, his hand on the other and the rest on him sprawled where he can find room, touching me as much as he can.

"Pard, helps remember?" His thumb smooths over the denim incasing my thigh. "Family."

This one learns entirely too fucking quickly if you ask me. But I can't stop myself from pushing the hair from his face, then letting the strands slip through my fingers. When I get to the end, though, it's my hand I let fall, not his hair, just so the tips are caught in my now-clenched fingers. Just so I can feel part of him. Just so I can fool myself that he's not going to be something way too important to me, for a little while longer.

If I hold out, I pretty sure I can do that for all of ten seconds.

The finger drilling into my thigh does two things. It breaks my train of thought. And it hurts.

The face I look down into is smiling. At me. And his voice is soft when he speaks.

"What happened?"

"I-I didn't know he was infected. It wouldn't have bothered me, but maybe we'd have been a little more careful. Cats aren't all that contagious. Sperm isn't an issue you have to deal with. You have to be either very carved up or very fucking unlucky. Between us both, I'd say we've got them both covered."

His face flickers, like his thoughts are fighting on which one gets to be voiced first.

"So there's a chance..."

Fuck, fuck and did I mention fuck? Slamming my head into the wall is starting to look good again.

"I'm sorry, Lumpy. Between the attack and me feeding you... you healed too fast. No, there's no chance."

The smile doesn't go. It just rolls into acceptance.

"So, how did you..."

What is it with this guy and the hand-flapping roll thing?

"It was too close to the moon. He got a little out of control and I ended up a little cut and a whole lot pissed. He was my lover, we were supposed to have some kind of trust thing going on. The test I took a week later was supposed to be formality to being fine. Like I said, cats just aren't that contagious... but I am that fucking unlucky. I never figure out how the parents found out, or how they got me committed, I'm not exactly a minor, but tada, here I am."

My arms spread out like I'm welcoming who knows what and the head on my thigh starts to rock a little, rubbing back and forth. Grabbing for his head, my fingers press into his skull to hold him still.

Talking about the last time I was fucked, even if I was fucked over as well, has kind of reminded me that Mike's head in my lap is not exactly a good idea. Because all in all, I've think I've freaked him out enough for today.

"It's time to sit up now, Lumpy."

"Why? I'm comfortable."

He lets me lift his head only so far before he turns, rubbing his lips over the bulge I'd forgotten about hiding.

"Mike, don't."

"Please, Sean, let me?"

He's rolling on to his stomach and my hands are trying to push at his shoulder. He's stronger than he looks, which is so not fucking helpful right now.

"Mike, you don't have to do this because you're grateful and I'm hard."

My answer is his mouth, again nuzzling at my crouch.

"Fuck!"

Well, that has him pulling back, and his face completely hidden by hair.

As he sits back upright on his haunches, I know I've fucked this up, but to fix it I need to find his face! And brushing it out of the way gives me another excuse to touch his skin.

"It's been six months, Mike, since sex was anything other than my hand and something I wanted over as quickly as possible. Your mouth on me, even through two layers of clothing is just a little too nice you know?" Steady is something I'm not as I wobble my way to standing.

Three very deep breaths later I might be capable of talking.

"Just let me go take care of this, I'll be back."

Like he can go anywhere.

I'm not even a whole step past him, when his hand, sliding up and over my thigh, stops me dead.

Again, his cheek slides over my crotch.

"Let me?"

Why is he making this, and me, so fucking hard?

"Lumpy, you don't have to do this."

"I know, but did it ever occur to you that I want to do this, for you. With you. I know what I owe you, Sean. I owe you my life. But I wouldn't belittle both of us by attempting to pay you back by blowing you. I just want to give you this. Let me?"

His hands go to the waistband of my jeans and I don't have another protest left in me. The button gives, and the zip offers up no barrier. His lips press to the hair sprinkled skin he just uncovered, before sucking a small fold of skin into his mouth, then pulling back, the skin dragging over his teeth as it breaks free.

That'll mark.

"More" is all I can manage to breathe.

My jeans get pushed toward my knees and a nose runs down my still covered sex then straight back up again. Teeth nip at my flesh again, before they bite at my boxers, dragging them down until my cock is free. Hands slide up my thighs, finishing the job of getting my underwear gone, because Mike's mouth now has a new quest as he licks his way around my balls, then swirls his tongue in the hair at the base of my length.

"Mike!"

"You like?" is what he purrs.

I nod.

"You want?"

I nod harder.

And his mouth slides up, using the throbbing vein along the underneath to mark his trail, before his tongue laps across the head, gathering as much precum as he can, then going back for more. It's just his tongue licking over me, around me.

I've got a choice, fall back against the wall, or fall down. The wall, thankfully, catches me.

Just as Mike decides to swallow me whole, one smooth movement and I'm incased in wet warm that I could have sworn I'd die without ever knowing again. His head pulls back, letting his teeth drag softly along me as he moves.

"Mike, I can't... I have to... you have to... don't. Stop. Mike!"

It's been so long, it feels so good, it's...fuck. This feels too good to want it to end, but it feels so good it's going to end, quickly. Though why do I get the feeling that even if my involuntary abstinence wasn't a factor, the man in front of me could still bring me to my knees in record time?

"I need to..."

Fall down, obviously. Even if I can't get the words out, my legs refuse to hold me upright any longer, wall or no wall. Between falling and landing, I'm as graceless as all fuck, but Mike doesn't notice. His mouth hasn't left my cock, he just waits for me to settle, not moving, just vaguely humming and rolling his tongue around the head when the need strikes him.

Rolling himself back between my legs, he gently starts to move his head. There's no furious bobbing up and down, just this slow play made up of tongue, teeth and mouth in a way that means I never know what's coming next.

There are no words for me to tell him what he's giving me here, and it's far from just a fucking blowjob. This was the first thing I gave up on ever feeling again.

There's something in that thought I'm missing, but right now thinking would require blood to the brain and I don't have any heading that way.

My hands twist handfuls of his hair into silken ropes, I can feel my hips starting to buck into the feeling starting to radiate from my cock out and over every inch of my skin.

"Mike, Lumpy... fuck, please?"

I can't form enough words to warn him and all pulling on his hair does is get him to move fractionally faster.

"Com-Clos. Mike!"

The tug at his hair is far from gentle this time, but all he does is lift his head enough for me to catch his eyes. There's a nod in the slow blink they make and the scrape of his teeth is harder this time.

His mouth doesn't leave me as I start to move my hips up to meet his mouth.

Doesn't leave me, as his name becomes one endless word streaming from my mouth.

Doesn't leave me as I come.

Doesn't leave me as I try to keep my soul from spilling into his mouth along with my seed.

I'm free as my orgasm wipes my mind blank. I'm free. 

When I remember to think, I reach for the head that should still be between my legs. He's not.

"Lumpy?"

I can kick my jeans from my legs and reach for the male trying to shrink into nothing at the end of our bed, really I can.

It's my turn to run my hand up a denim-covered leg, letting my hand just rest on his sex, kind of cupping it, but not really.

He's scared and hope isn't something he has a lot of right now either. We're a fine fucking pair really.

"Mike?"

My hand rubs over his cock. Fuck, he feels nice.

"Fuck me?"

His eyes flare, then shut down completely.

"I-you-we."

"Yep, you've got all the pronouns covered. How about I give it a shot. I don't know what's going on here, or what if anything, this will turn out to be. But I do know, as of this second, I want you in me, fucking me hard enough that I'll still be able to feel you this time tomorrow."

Fucked if I know where all this profound shit is coming from, but I'm opening my mouth and saying it anyway.

"Mike, you said you wanted to give before, so now it's your turn to receive, okay? There's only you and me in this room and we don't have the closet space to let any form of pity move in with us as well."

The nod translates into nothing more than the ends of his hair moving. I'd give my left lung to jump him now, but there's one little thing I have to ask about first.

I could slaughter my conscience at times.

"Lumpy, was Randy your lover?"

Just for the record, there is no good answer to that question. If it's yes... well yeah, and if it's no… well, fuck.

His answer is quiet, but the words are just as clearer as if he'd screamed them.

"No. He's just my Randy."

Well, fuck.

"Lumpy, have you..." Now I'm doing the hand-waving flapping thing. Is that fucking contagious?

"No."

Okay, now we have a problem. Yes I am ignoring the twenty-six we've had up to this point, shut the fuck up already.

This time I fall sideways into the wall-which is fast becoming my new best friend-and shut my eyes tight enough to see white spots dancing the tango behind my closed lids.

I don't know how to do this. I'm not fucking capable of doing this. And one more time, a choice is something I don't have.

"I'm sorry, I know I'm not-"

"Fuck no! Not even, Lumpy."

Note to self: Don't yell at the scared roommate. He jumps, then does the curling thing again, and you then feel like rat shit moulded into human form.

I'm naked, me pushing my body into the bed and trying to slither toward him doesn't get any more submissive. My head nudges at his legs, until they uncurl enough for me to rub my mouth up his legs, stopping to trail my tongue over a half hard cock hidden behind denim. I'm the one looking up at him now.

"Whatever you're thinking, it's not that. Three days ago, you were straight, whole, and out there. For better or worse, we're stuck with each other, Mike. I'm not sure if I can go the rest of my life tied to someone that hates me for pushing them into something they weren't capable of dealing with."

A finger trails down my nose, before rubbing absently over my bottom lip.

I'll be jerking off again before this day is over, never you mind about that.

His face is so open; the words he's thinking all but written there like a book.

"Mike? You know all that shit I don't know? There is one more thing I do know. This isn't a case of any dick will do. I want you, I just don't want to rush you."

Gee, do you think I'm harping much?

The finger rubs down the tendons in my neck, brushing over my Adam's apple.

"Not straight. Would you let me?"

"In how many languages would you like me to beg? Be warned though, I only speak one."

My hand moves upward to cup is his hip, rubbing at the sharp bone not quite filling my hand.

"I want you, I want you in me. You tell me what you want."

"You."

Again the word is almost whispered. There's gonna come a day when he screams at me, and he'll wonder why I'll be the one laughing. 

"Fine by me, Lumpy. But right now, you need to you need to get naked and I need to see if anything in that closet just there will pass as lube."

Pressing my face into his crotch, his cock is fuller than it was a minute ago. Twisting and pushing I'm back on my hands and knees. My nose bumps at his before I bend, biting sharply at his neck.

"I'll be back. You. Naked."

The bathroom is singularly unhelpful when it comes to producing lube from thin air, so shampoo it is. It's not exactly classy, but believe it or not, I'm not all that much into pain, and that's exactly what this will be if we try to do it with nothing but spit.

Walking back out, I get this weird sense of déjà vu. My lump is back.

Fuck me.

Only... only this time he's making sure I can't see his back or his thighs.

"Mike?" Sliding my hand under his hair, one finger travels up his spine, running gently over every bump. "The scars aren't important. They mark your body, but they don't mark the person inside. Besides, we all have them."

I slide one hand, palm up, into his field of vision, baring the scared wrist, but that's not what he sees. He sees the four-inch faded silver line running from my thumb downward. Fuck it, wrong hand. He doesn't need the reminder of that, not right now.

He mutters what might be "Thank you" before unfurling enough to reach for my hand, his tongue wet and almost warm as it slides over the scar, then up my index finger before he bites softly at the tip. My finger is still in his mouth when he sits up, moving until he's sitting between my thighs with his legs wrapped around my waist.

Then he lets my finger go.

My hands are sliding over his shoulders even as his are slipping around my waist. He's blown me, why is this so hard? All I want to do is kiss him, yet all I can do is try and move and hope he meets me half way. Our noses touch first and he lets me bump his to the side.

I can feel his fingers walking along my spine.

Our mouths are so close now that each breath I take is part him, part air. Lips meet, just pressing together, just touching, just trying to be sure and yet knowing we can't be.

My braid is in his hands. 

His teeth drag over my bottom lip as my fingers knot in the hair at the base of his skull. He pushes and I pull, lips move, teeth nip, tongues mate.

And his fingers pull at my braid until it's loose, flowing hair again.

He tastes like he's had my cock in his mouth, sure, but there's the taste of him within the taste of me and that's when I know I'm in trouble.

Either then, or when one hand leaves my back and wraps around my now hard again cock, take your pick.

"Mike, we need to... I need you to... Fuck me already!"

"Impatient?" There's laughter in his voice.

I like it.

"If your legs weren't over mine, I'd show you impatient. Please, Mike, it’s been so long, make me feel, please?" 

I could have lived without the horse whisper my voice turned into when Lumpy's hand started to twist a little, but like I said, don't sweat the small shit.

"I n-need to get you-u..."

His voice is catching because my hand's doing some moving of it's own. He feels so hard in my grasp, so smooth in my touch. My hand slips along his length so easily and as I squeeze my fist over the head, the precum filling my hand just makes everything smoother still.

"You need to get me ready, but I can't move with your legs pinning me down."

Have I mentioned his smile?

Though it seems I have one more awkward as hell question to ask.

"Do you know what you need to do to-"

The nip he makes at my lower lip is quick, the way his tongue glides over the gentle hurt is not so quick.

"Trust me."

Why is that easier to do that I thought it'd be?

Pulling his legs from where they rest, he moves back, his hands on my hips attempting to roll me over.

"No, I want to see you."

Why is that important? His nod and the way he reaches for the shampoo really doesn't give me a chance to think, but there's something there. Something I'm still missing.

But he's moving, so who cares.

Pouring a small puddle of the fluid in the concave beside my hipbone, I think he's doing his best not to laugh until he's in tears.

"If you can find anything better in that closet, next time we'll try it." The words are out of mouth before I even realise what I've said, but the soft smirk his lips form stops my building panic, dead.

As he bends forward, his hair falls, covering his face and half of my body. Even the touch of that is a little more than I can stand right now. But the way he kisses the skin above my navel? And the feel of slick fingers teasing the skin of my balls and the flesh they hide? Sweet fuck.

"Mike, you know that whole ‘it's been so long’ thing? Do you think you can speed this up a notch before I spontaneously combust?"

One finger slips into me and from beneath his hair I kind of hear the words, "Won't hurt you."

The more his fingers tease, the more his mouth marks me, the more the burn grows until I can almost feel its flame over every inch of flesh.

"You won't hurt me, you can't. Fuck me, Mike, now!"

Kneeling back up, he scoops up the rest of the liquid, slicking it over his hard sex, arching into his fist.

"Lumpy, your hair, want to see you."

One hand pulls his hair back and to the side, the other starts to spread my legs before its mate joins in, leaving me open to him as he moves in, his cock hard against my opening.

His mouth opens and I cut off whatever the words were that he was about to utter.

"Yes, I'm sure. Move!"

The feel of him slipping into me, the muscles giving just enough to pull him further in is... is... is not like I remember. Some how, this time it's more. It's better.

It's been way too long since I was fucked.

There's no stopping and waiting for the pleasure to catch up with the pain, just this slow push forward until the two over lap each other. The breath in my throat catches until it chokes its way out in a weird kind of gurgle.

Only when he's fully seated within me does he stop, bending to lick over my lips.

Submission.

Even though I'm the one flat on my back with his cock up my ass.

"N-now would be a really good time to start moving, Lumpy, before I go off without you again."

Pushing himself back up, his way too slow retreat from my body is combined with him using tendrils of his hair to touch my chest like extra fingers.

So not fucking fair.

"Sean, touch yourself for me, please? I want to see the look on your face when you come this time."

My hand moves through a curtain of hair that Mike keeps gently gliding back and forth, over my abs, flicking at my nipples. The grasp of my fist tightens as he pushes his way back home, stroking over my prostate.

His next pull back is nowhere the length of the first. I think my Lumpy might be hitting overload himself.

Lifting my hips to greet his next thrust, the hand not tugging on my cock pushes his head up, so brown eyes are meeting brown eyes.

"More."

I have no idea if he asked or I demanded, but the word is out, more is what we both get.

More as he starts to pound my ass, losing any rhyme of reason. More as my hand moves faster, trying to reach the pleasure I can see hovering just beyond our grasp.

More as my name starts come in small pants from Mike's mouth. More as the ability to speak leaves me completely.

More as his eyes slam shut, more as his coming cock is pushed hard against my prostate. More as his face clenched in pleasure is burned into my memory and my own hot seed fills my hand, spilling over onto my torso.

More as he comes to rest in the curve of my arms and I want to pull him close enough that I'll be able to feel his heartbeat against mine.

More.

What the fuck have we done?

~*~

Would it surprise anybody to know I think I might have, somehow, fucked this up entirely?

No? Good. I’m still batting a thousand then.

He’s in the shower. I shower in the morning, he gets the night. It works, and if there’s two minutes more hot water at night, well, fuck it. I’m more used to the cold than he is. 

He’ll walk out of the bathroom with his jeans already on - don’t ask me how, because I have no fucking idea - just as dinner is served. I’ll go get it from its hidey-hole while he brushes his hair. He’ll mutter ‘thank you’ and I’ll grunt, which both of us will pretend means ‘you’re welcome.’ There’ll be a mandatory joke over the slop, I think it’s my turn to make it tonight. That means Mike gets to fake the smile, though he tends to work up to a brittle laugh.

His smile’s gone.

The meal’s eaten in silence and then silence is worshipped like a god until one of us falls asleep as far from the other as we can get on a pallet not big enough for one child, let alone two men. I have no idea what Mike did on the one night I feel asleep first, but I know for the other four. I’ve sat, cross-legged in the almost endless dark, beside him. Watching. Wanting. 

Kicking myself for fucking everything up so spectacularly.

I remember wanting nothing more than to just lay there, touching him and other various sappy things. And then I remember the panic that basically turned me into ‘Instant Prick, just add water.’ I don’t know what Lumpy expected afterward, but I think it’s fairly safe to assume that it wasn’t me moving away from him fast enough to friction burns from the blanket.

Friction burns in fucking painful places into the bargain.

My toes became very interesting as I grumbled something a shower, and I managed to hit new heights of insulting with a few careless words about washing him off me. All in all I went above and beyond the known limits of how to fuck up that awkward after sex moment.

It’s kind of hard to talk about the weather with a guy that’s been up your ass. Even harder when you can’t actually see the fucking weather, but that’s basically what we’ve been mastering since then.

I’m gonna have to fix this, aren’t I? I only have one tiny question.

How?

The shower’s stopped. The race is on. I have two minutes to somehow come up with the answer. Maybe if I thought of an easier question? Something on the inner workings of the back bottom right hand corner of the left hemisphere of the human brain should do it.

Fuck.

Pulling my legs up and resting my eye sockets on my kneecaps just makes spot dance before my eyes. They’re pretty and all, but they don’t know the answer either.

And again, fuck.

Mike’s out of the bathroom now, I can feel him watching me. He’s standing in the doorway waiting for me to move so he can sit down.

There’s no sound of dinner arriving yet. Mike’s early or the fuckwits are late. Either way, it looks like the universe might be offering me a one time only deal. And I guess I had better take it, because you can bet if I ignore it there’s fuck-all chance of it ever coming again.

My knees drop, my legs spread and finally I make my head look up at him, the loose hair parting to reveal my face. Grabbing the hairbrush that’s still beside me, my eyes drop, pointing to the space between my thighs, and I manage to force something that resembles an actual word past my constricted throat muscles.

“Please?”

Nope, he’s not all that thrilled with starting this dance over again.

“I fucked up, Lumpy.” Now there’s a newsflash. “I-I’m asking for a chance to explain shit, and I’m asking for you to make it a little easier by letting me touch you while I do it.”

Pard. Family. I don’t say it, but we both hear it and ignore it, all in the space of breath. This needs to be fixed without me falling back on the ‘we’re stuck with each other, let’s make the best of a truly fucked situation’ clause. I want him to have a choice, and I want him to choose me.

Let’s not examine that thought too closely, shall we? Because last time I tried thinking is what got me into this mess to begin with.

And now that I’ve opened the wound, it’s time to let it bleed.

“I can’t do it without touching you, Mike. Have pity on the fucked up puss, please.”

For what should be two heartbeats, if my heart wasn’t at a stand still, he’s rigid. And I’ve lost. My mouth opens again, but before the words can come, he’s there, standing where I want him to sit. A hand strokes over my head before he turns, sitting so close that his ass is pressed against my crotch and leaning forward so I can still reach the ends of his hair. Both of his legs are pressed tightly against the inside length of mine.

I want to slip my arms around his waist, pull him back against me and bury my face in his hair, letting the scent of us, the scent of pard that I’m already addicted too, envelop us both. I’ve missed this. Well, at least, I’ve missed being awake to feel it. And him. 

Avoidance maybe the game we play while we’re awake, but the rules seem to change when our eyes shut. There hasn’t been a morning when I have woken to feel his breath again my skin, his hair against my flesh, our limbs tangled within each other. And there hasn't been a morning when I haven’t laid there, pretending, until Mike’s woken and pulled himself away. 

Have I mentioned that sometime in the last week, I started sprouting mushy random bullshit? No? Consider it done now then.

But, right now, I have to deal with the fact Mike thinks I hate him, or something damn close, so none of what I’d rather be doing is gonna happen until I start talking. 

So, of course, I take procrastination to as yet unknown levels and the first thing I do is start brushing the knots in his hair at the base of his spine.

You know, long hair and no conditioner really is an exercise in stupidity. How’s that for a simile for my life?

Yeah, I know, start talking.

“I’m sorry, Mike.”

Hair moves, I guess he’s shrugging. Do normal people that have enough hair for five other normal people give away so much with how their hair moves?

Can I get any fucking stupider?

“It’s not your fault I’m not... enough.” 

If I’d have had a clue, I’d have realised that he would see this as his failure, wouldn’t I? I manage to choke the snort trying desperately to work its way loose, which is possibly the first smart thing I’ve done in over a week. I know how I’d mean it, but then again, I also know how Lumpy would take it. The way his shoulders start to cave inward at my silence only confirms that.

I’ll be going back to that first impulse I had and giving in to it now, if it’s all the same to you.

I can feel muscles roll beneath my fingers as they move over his hips to interlock over his navel. I can’t help but feel the way his spine sets when I lean forward, bringing my chest to his back. Then I can feel his breathing almost snap to a stop as he waits for me to say something I guess.

But just for a second I’m going to breathe him into my lungs, letting peace I don’t ever remember feeling soothe over me like a touch.

More fucking psychobabble. You’ve a lot to answer for, Lumpy!

“Mike? If I say it’s not you, it’s me, will you give me a chance to explain myself before you turn around and break my nose?”

He’s silent, but still sitting there. Close enough to yes for me.

“Trust me, you not being enough is not the problem, but you being too much might be. I know I said before that it was something above an itch, but fuck it, Mike, I didn’t know how much above that it’d be and I freaked.”

I’m not explaining this all that well, am I?

“Sean, you don’t have to find a nice way of saying I’m damaged and not fucking worthy.”

Does he realise the knack he has for confirming my fear every damn time?

“I know I don’t have too, because that’s not what I’m trying to say at all! Damn it all to hell and back, Mike, I’ve done nothing but talk to myself for months now, and talking to you, about my fucking feelings of all things, is about as easy as ripping my throat out and laying it at your feet. Which is what I wanted to do by the way, and that’s why I panicked!”

Umm, yeah. Not exactly what I meant to say, or yell as the case maybe, and I’d sell my soul to have not said them right now, but that’s where the problem lies. I get this funny feeling I don’t actually own my soul any more.

Ducking my head into his shoulder, I just want to hide here for a decade or six, but the hesitant touch of rough fingertips over my joined hands reminds me of why I can’t.

The kiss I can’t help leaving on the skin in front of me still seems more intimate than having him inside me.

Why?

“You’re not damaged, Mike. Any more than I am.”

His wandering fingers stumble, but his voice doesn’t.

“You weren’t raped.”

Now human voice should be that flat, ever. And I want to spill blood into the earth because Mike’s is like that now.

Leaning against my friend the wall, I pull Lumpy back with me, resting his head in the hollow between my shoulder and my neck. There’s a hand still resting against his stomach, holding both of his still, and my other one pulls his hair back from his face.

“Mike, am I any less to you because of what my parents did?”

Am I anything to you at all?

“How the fuck do you figure that, Sean? You can’t be held responsible because they’re sick people not fit to parent an ant farm.”

A fleeting smile crosses my face at his tone, before it’s gone and I continue.

“Why can’t I? They’re my gene pool. How can I not be what they are? Cruel, sadistic, unfeeling. Unlovable.”

My Lumpy can move when he wants to. Suddenly he’s straddling my thighs, facing me, his face in mine and his fingers digging into my shoulders, shaking me so my neck snaps my head even closer into his.

“If you were any of those things you’d have fucking killed me when I asked you to! Or you’d have let me blow you, not offered to go jerk off. You’d have taken me, not offered yourself to me, knowing there was every chance I had no fucking idea what I was doing.” Strong hands lift my chin, fingers tracing over my cheekbones. “You wouldn’t have given me your last shirt because I was cold, and then told me it was okay when I dumped it because I was pissed at everything.” 

“Nah, that just means you owe me a shirt when we get out of here. Red, please. And flannel.”

“You can’t wear flannel to the opera.” 

He’s smiling.

“Eh. So we’ll go bar hoping instead.”

His smile grows, brightens just that bit more.

“If you plan on picking up chicks, you’re going alone.”

I want to reach out and grab him, force him to look me in the eye, to know how important what I know I’m going to say is. I want to scream it, shake him, because he has to realise...

All I do is meet his eyes, then let myself bleed into his depth.

“I’d need to pick up chicks, because why?”

“You wouldn’t.”

As Mike’s head bends to close what little distance there is between us, mine does too, off to one side, baring my throat. My teeth sink into my bottom lip as his nip firmly at the ridge of tendons I’ve left open for him, travelling upward until he meeting the line of my jaw. His tongue follows the bone to my ear, again he bites, though this time he doesn’t let go, just continues to worry at the ear lobe in his mouth.

“Mike.”

It’s as if his name is the cue he was waiting for as his lips move over my cheekbone, back down to my mouth, his tongue flicking at the teeth I’m still biting at my lips with. Just as I let go, he sucks the lip into his mouth, again using his tongue to play over the swelling. Letting me go, he doesn’t give me a chance to draw a breath before he’s back, pushing against my lips, curling his tongue over them like a crooking finger saying come and play. I follow the call, filling his mouth, trying to gather every part of him I can from his mouth. His taste, the sensation of us both taking, both giving, both receiving. 

The fact that there are stars dancing in front of my eyes from lack of oxygen is the only reason I pull back. Even then, our heads may separate but Lumpy’s hips just move closer, starting to softly grind his ass against my growing cock.

His forehead rests against mine as I pant. Fuck, he’s good.

My fingers start to curl in the ends of his hair. Oh yes, this hair is going to end up a lovely little kink, I can tell that much already. 

There’s so much I can tell already.

“Mike?”

I so don’t want to think right now, let alone speak. But I had a point to make back there somewhere, and it still needs to be made.

Lumpy does fuck all to help, just makes a vague “Hmmm” sound while trying to bump my head to one side with his nose so he can get back to my neck.

“If I’m not the product of my genes, how can you be damaged because of what some fucker you didn’t know did to you?”

He stops nuzzling, pulling his head up, but he can’t move away, I won’t let him.

“Rape is-“

“Not your fault!” My words cut across anything he might have said. “It’s a lot of things, and none of them are your fault. Please believe me, Mike, for fuck’s sake, believe me. You’re not damaged. I may be the biggest bastard to walk the earth for ever making you think you were, but you aren’t. I look at you, and all I see is Mike, Lumpy, the guy that scares the crap out of me for how much I feel, the guy I hurt by being an idiot. My pard.”

Fuck!

Sweet fuck, no!

The door that never opens is doing just that, and it’s all I can do to throw Mike about as far from me as I can. They can’t... they won’t...

“No, you’re safe” is all I get out before the door swings inward, smacking against the wall so hard the ringing hurts my ears.

“Kinney, Kinney, Kinney.” I think the guy shaking his head as he chants my name is human, but I’d need a second opinion. “You still alive, Kinney? Why?”

“I’ve got a date for the opera I can’t break.”

The fist into my solar plexus bends me in two and breaks something. I don’t remember breathing ever feeling like swallowing flame before.

“You’re a smart-assed little prick, aren’t you, Kinney?”

A foot pushed into the small of my back catches my hair, pushing me to my knees while rearing my head up.

Lumpy is all I can see. He’s coiling, like a snake ready to strike. 

Concentrate, Sean!

The knee being drilled into my face cracks my cheekbone and it takes me a second to move past the sound echoing around my brain and the pain threatening to swamp me.

One shot.

Dropping every pretence I’ve ever thought about having, I let everything still alive within me into my eyes, offering it all to Mike, pleading with words I can’t say out loud. Letting my gaze drop to his lap, my head tilts, my neck is his.

Please understand Mike, please!

Silently I almost mouth. Pard. You. Safe.

A boot slams into my gut.

For crying out fucking loud, take me out of here you fuckwit, so he doesn’t have to see this.

I can feel my hair being ripped out by its roots as I’m suddenly pulled backward. My feet scramble, but they don’t care if I can stand. They just drag.

Out the door that never opens, down the corridor.

At least Mike won’t see.

I don’t know where I fucking end up, I just know it’s dark. Or not. Both my cheekbones are broken and my eyes are kind of swollen shut. My arms are raised above my head, shackled in silver. I think I’m grateful I’ve lost all feeling as of who the fuck knows how many hours ago. One wrist is broken, at least.

I’m too scared to move my head. My hair’s been whipped into the mess of welts and blood on my back and I’m scared that ripping it loose would be the straw that broke the were’s back.

Because my back is the only thing not broken. My ribs are barely letting me breathe and I dislocated a shoulder when my legs forgot how to hold me upright.

The soles of my feet bear whip marks from a cane wrapped with silver wire.

Every weapon they’ve used, shoes, hands, whips, they all involved enough silver to make me bleed, make it hurt, stop me from healing. But never enough to kill me.

I don’t want to die.

I want to go back to Mike, curl up in his lap, feel his hands in my hair, his lips at my temple.

I want my family. Yes, I am selfish enough to want to die in his arms. He can’t help me, because I can’t help me.

I’m sorry, Mike. So sorry. So sorry.

There’s no warning, just a hand, ripping hair and skin from my back, pulling my head up.

“How do you feel now, Kinney? You know your sick perverted ways brought this all on yourself, don’t you? Monsters like you shouldn’t let yourself live, fouling our precious world with your filth. You know what you have to do, don’t you, Sean? Do the right thing for once, son. Let us mourn the son we had, give us some honour, Sean. Your mother sends her love, son. Don’t you love us enough to use my present for you? Embrace it, Kinney. Honour your family.”

Family? Mike? Father? Family? Mike.

Black. It’s seeping into my ears, down my throat, drowning me, swallowing me. Black.

At least Mike won’t see.

~*~

~Mike’s POV~

Coward.

I didn’t move. They took him, dragged him out by a fistful of hair and I didn’t move. Part of me wants to believe it was the pleading I saw in Sean’s eyes that made me stay put, but most of me knows it wasn’t.

Fear.

It froze me against the wall where Sean had thrown me. Kept my hands by my side, digging nails into my palms until they bruised as Sean bent over, then came up coughing blood, still trying to tell me to be safe. It climbed onto my shoulder, then whispered in my ear every half-truth I’ve ever heard about how to hurt a were. Not kill, hurt. It kept going and going, until I started singing. 999 bottles of beer on the wall. 

By the time the last bottle of beer fell, I was hoarse and fear had gone.

Scared.

Sometime, while Sean was... while we both were acting like fucking idiots, the black of this place became my friend. The endless choking dark when they turned the lights out meant I would sleep, knowing Sean was watching, knowing that sooner or later he’d forget whatever rode him like an unbroken horse and he’d sleep. He’d reach for me, want my touch. That’s when the pitch black became my friend. 

Then they took what had really become my friend and all the blackness held was fear. Fear that I wouldn’t make it without going insane. Fear that they would kill Sean. Fear that they wouldn’t. Fear that they’d take him somewhere else. Fear that they’d bring him back.

Fear that all my life would be lived with this wound in my soul where Sean was supposed to be attached.

Panic.

Sitting on the pallet, forcing myself not to rock, wishing I had his shirt back, wishing I had him back as blackness become something that grew fingers and taunted me, poking me, laughing at me. Screaming over and over in my head, ‘He’s not coming back, you’re alone, he’s not coming back.’

It hurt to breathe by the time I’d finished singing ‘I’m Henry the Eighth I Am’ but the dark no longer touched me.

Lonely.

Because Sean wasn’t there to touch me, either.

My head shook as I kept walked my four steps and pivoted. No, I wasn’t going back to scared. Not now. I couldn’t.

So I paced until time brought me here. Sean’s been gone for almost two days.

And the one emotion I’ve been trying to outrun has caught up and swamped me.

Anger.

Swirling around my head, lighting the dark with its red haze. Unfocused, unrelenting, covering me, wanting to rip the screams from my throat. Stalking from one wall to the other is all I can do, not letting one sound loose, pushing the violence into one box after another.

The first box belonged to the gods. For putting me in the park that night, and because there was nobody else to blame for why I stopped Randy, trying to make him notice the beauty of the moon and the way the light of it took away the city’s grunge.

The next box belonged to the grunge the city then reminded me of with one hell of bitchslap. A growl I can’t stop wells in my throat. What gave him the right to do that to anybody? Wrong place, wrong time is neither excuse nor reason. Karma will see him punished, but not before I am. Nothing I’d ever done, or even thought about fucking doing in this or my past twenty-seven life times warranted this. I’m not some side of beef, not some wind-up toy. I’m me. Just me. 

But that’s still important, I’m still important.

Family. Pard.

The box marked irrational anger has Randy shoved inside of it. And yes, I do know that being pissed at Randy makes little sense. But he left me here, we both trusted in his magic and it failed. He left me. Does he wonder? Did he know? 

Is he scared, too?

Anger.

Can someone spring me from here, just so I can kill Sean’s parents? The violence surrounding them in my head won't be shoved into any box. How could they take the gift of a child’s love and crush it because he couldn’t judge like they do? That’s their failing, not his.

And again it’s the innocents that pay. In blood. In tears.

In a ten-foot square cell.

And while I’m contemplating murder, add Sean’s...boyfriend to the list. My brain won’t wrap itself around the fact he was Sean’s lover, because he wasn’t. Lovers don’t betray like that, lovers aren’t careless.

Lovers know how to be gentle, how to give. How to say they’re sorry even when you’re just as wrong as they are.

Lovers give you their last shirt when you’re cold. 

Fuck it, Sean, you’re coming back, there’s unfinished shit here, and you have to come back so we can finish it. Move forward. 

Sit through some fucking horrid opera. 

What happens when anger passes? Nothing much. There’s no tidal wave of any great understanding, no answers in its wake. All I’m left with is legs that won’t hold me upright any more, some vague acceptance, a little hope and the need to have Sean back.

The bed is almost too big without his body to avoiding touching, but curling up in the corner that still smells like him helps. A little. The scent isn’t as strong as the one he washes over me to help me settle when the nightmares come and he doesn’t realise that I’ve woken.

I can feel myself wanting to start to rock, and no, just no, we’re not going backward here, Michael. My fingers curl around the edge of the mattress, trying to find something to hold me still, stable. 

All I find is the way out that Sean hid from me.

Sitting up, crossed legged like I’m back in Kindergarten, a quick movement of my hands and there it is. Salvation, my way home. 

Sean’s silver bladed switch knife.

For something that means so much, is so much, it should be heavier, shouldn’t it? I keep waiting for the metal to burn my hand, but it doesn’t. Or it doesn’t until I drag the blade down one finger, digging the point into my palm just above my life line, that burns enough to make me stop. Quickly.

Where would I have to cut to kill me?

_*"I'm not going to kill you. Do whatever you need to deal with that fact."*_

With you here, I can deal. Without you, I just don’t fucking know, Sean.

The point of the knife brushes back and forward over my wrist.

_*“Three times I drew that fucking silver blade across my palm for you."*_

Why, Sean? What was I to you? Anybody else would have let me die and probably been grateful when I did. And even if you didn’t care much for my death, what about everything else? I wouldn’t have known about family, about the pard.

I couldn’t have missed what I never knew I was supposed to have.

The knife traces up the veins in my arm.

_*“I am not a thing that needs to be tamed and whipped, I am me, Sean Kinney.”*_

How did you do it, Sean? How did you remain sane? What kept you mind in your head when the walls grew tentacles? 

*“And I'll still be that when the day comes and I can walk out of here, laughing long and hard at the pricks I'll be leaving behind."*

How can you still believe we’ll feel the sun on our face and shift under the moon some day?

The knife dangles from two fingers of my right hand.

_*"That knife I saved your life with? It's the one I was supposed to take mine with.”*_

The room rings as the knife bounces off the brickwork when I throw it. Sean gave me a gift, not just my life, part of him. I don’t want to, but if push comes to shove, I will do this alone. What ever happens, I’ll honour him.

I just really want him back.

There’s no warning this time either, the same door opening inward and muted light that still manages to hurt my eyes. I don’t want too, but something tells me to stay away from the lit wedge splitting the room.

Are they coming for me? Do they even know I’m still here?

I’m still trying to blend into the wall when the light is blocked, by two bodies carrying... My lip bleeds as I sink my teeth into it trying to stop the noise from leaving my mouth. I can feel it dripping down my chin.

Sean?

They don’t even try to help him, they just move their arms away and he falls, face-first, onto the cement.

He doesn’t make a sound. Not then, not as they kick his legs out of the way enough so they can slam the door shut.

“Sean?”

There’s no answer, but I was kind of hoping... you know?

_*Go to him, Michael.*_

The floor’s cold against my bare stomach, but I don’t want to take myself a level above Sean by walking to him. So crawling it is. I’m not even fully past the edge of the pallet when it hits me, crawls up my nose, down my throat, down into my stomach and curdles food that’s suddenly forming a lump in my gut when I haven’t eaten for days. A stench that makes my eyes water and bile bubble in my throat.

Before I’m even aware of it, I’m on my side, trying to hide my face in my arms. What the fuck is that?

_*Blood. Bad blood, fear and hatred, Michael.*_

Since when does blood smell? Let alone smell like this.

Why the fuck am I talking to myself? Why the fuck is the voice that answers me female?

_*Answers as you can deal with them, Michael. You smell the blood because you are were now.*_

I am were now.

Four little words, drilling something home that I knew, in my head, kind of. But it’s real, I am were now. Next time I need a reminder, though, I’d really just prefer a post card if it’s all the same to you, all great knowing cosmos.

Yeah, right.

Sean.

Forcing myself back to my knees, there’s got to be a way to breathe past this vile odour. After all, I don’t remember Sean hurling on me. A soft touch, accompanied by a voice that was both pissy and gentle, that I remember, but no hurling.

Two seconds later I’m beside Sean, five seconds after that I’m vomiting into the toilet bowl. I never thought I’d ever be glad this place is so small.

Fuck!

When I know there’s nothing left in my stomach, and that includes whatever was lining it, I move back to Sean. 

My stomach still rolls.

“Sean?”

My hand hovers over his body. I want to touch, I’m just not sure if I can without poking at a bruise or open, weeping, raw skin. I settle for running the back of a bent finger over a two-inch square patch of flesh just below his ear. There’s a back under those cuts, under the matted, tangled abstract art work mess of hair, skin and blood, I know there is. Because if I went back and looked harder, I could probably see his spine.

Dear gods and goddesses, I’m going to have to touch him, to roll him over, aren’t I? I can’t feed him without seeing his mouth. Can I feed him? Will it help? Where did that fucking knife go? I don’t want to see his face look anything like his back...I don’t have a clue how to help. Sean never covered what to do if it was him that was hurt, where’s that fucking knife? I’ve got to help, it’s Sean.

It’s Sean.

_*Settle, Michael, please. You’ll be doing nobody any good if you panic yourself into stupidity.*_

Who the hell are you? Why are you in my head? Get the fuck out of my head, I don’t want you there, get out! Get out! GET-

_*MICHAEL!*_

And my name is Mike!

_*And I prefer Michael.*_

Who are you?

_*My name is Phaelene.*_

Well, that was easy. Next question, why the fuck are you in my head? And why I am arguing with you? Sean’s hurt here, I don’t have time to lose my mind, when Sean’s healed, I’ll pencil it in.

_*Michael, did you always babble like this? Because if you did, why didn’t your Randy strangle you?*_

How do you know about Randy? Who are you?

WHY ARE YOU IN MY HEAD?

_*I know about your Randy, because I am in your head. And I am in your head because I am now part of you. Forgive me for saying it like this, but you ate my remains, Michael, and because of that, you share my munin now.*_

I think I’m going to be sick again. I ate... sweet fuck.

_*Michael? What’s done is done, it can’t be undone, but how do you feel about getting back to Sean now? We’ll have plenty of time to talk over the finer points of everything later. Just think of me as your fairy weremother.*_

You’re in his head too? You can help him?

_*No, just you, little panther. Together, we’re going to help him.*_

Why aren’t you with him too?

_*Michael, concentrate! I am only with you, but we can still heal Sean. We, Michael, but you have to stop wandering off the path I’m trying to show you!*_

Sean.

He’s still lying there, but the puddle of blood I’m expecting him to surrounded by isn’t. That can’t be good, can it?

_*No, it isn’t. Turn him over, please, but grab hold of your strength, Michael, you’re going to need it.*_

There’s nowhere to touch that won’t leave blood on my hands, so one arm cradles his head while the other pushes as softly as I can at his torso. I don’t want to hurt him, but I wish he’d make a sound. Even one made in pain would prove he’s still alive and feeling.

The only thing I can hear is the whimper that leaves my mouth. It started out as Sean’s name and ended up a questioning plea to anybody listening.

Where’s his face? Where are his eyes? All I see is black and blue swelling with blood- caked hair stuck where his eyes should be... in his mouth...

I don’t question what I’m doing, I just bend, pressing a kiss to his mouth, too afraid to move the hair as I swipe my tongue along what I think is his bottom lip.

Water. I need water, I need to get-

_*Michael! You have the attention span of a gnat!*_

Phaelene?

_*Yes, sugar, I’m still here. You need to find that knife you threw away. Now!*_

Kissing Sean again, I lay his head back against the concrete. The knife. Somebody’s smiling on me, because I don’t spend three hours in the dark looking for the fucking thing, it’s barely a foot from Sean’s left shoulder.

I know she only mentioned the knife, but I’m going to need to find his mouth, and for that I need water, With the knife held between my teeth, it’s nothing to quickly find a cup of water and a rag, sorry, it’s a T-shirt, my bad. The water’s cold and I want to dance when he kind of flinches at the temperature, but I don’t have time. Even with soaking the shirt and most of Sean in the water, I can still see chunks of skin from his lips in the hair I pull gently away from his face.

Sean was right, those fuckwits aren’t human.

Sitting back by his side, I’m the one asking, ‘Now what?’

*Now...now I need control, Michael. I won’t take it, I can, but I won’t. You’re going to have to give it to me. Will you?*

You can heal, Sean?

_*I can heal him enough that he’ll be able to shift. What I can’t mend, the shift will.*_

How?

_*With the blood of his pard and little magic, Michael.*_

The magic is you? 

_*Trust me Michael, I know you don’t know me, and it’s hard. I know magic hasn’t brought you what you though it would. But try, please. But also know you can still trust in what you do know, even if you think you can’t. It’s okay to have faith in your Randy, in that Sean won’t hurt you. In Sean himself.*_

Am I missing something here?

*No, you missed it a few days ago. You just need to remember, the human is still inside the beast, just as the beast is always inside the human.*

Phaelene?

_*We need to feed Sean now, will you let me take over?*_

Where do you need the cut? Let me feed him by myself first, for just a second, please.

_*Your choice, Michael.*_

My eyes seek Sean’s left hand. Oddly enough, his hands are still clean, intact, and I can see the scar there so easily. My scar. The knife cuts into the tissue of my hand with little effort, but fuck it burns like acid. I can feel tears welling in my eyes, but the cut’s barely an inch long, it needs to be longer. 

Three inches longer and there are tears running down my face. For Sean. I rub the bleeding heel of my hand over his lips, willing him to open as I open and close my fingers, pumping the blood as best I can into his mouth. The first soft touch of his tongue seems to take forever to come, but once it does, that’s when I know.

Your turn, Phaelene.

_*Thank you, Michael*_

I still prefer Mike.

~*~

This is...well, weird works. Phaelene hasn’t pushed me to one side, not really, but I still feel like I’m looking through a hazy window that’s been placed between me and the eyes I normally see out of.

I can feel Sean’s mouth at my hand, can almost sense him getting stronger just from the way he sucks at the wound. I can hear Phaelene chanting in a language that I have no hope of ever understanding, but it’s like they’re all feelings that have to travel down a dark tunnel before they reach me.

Like I said. Weird.

The one downside to all of this is I can’t see Sean, not clearly enough to know if he’s coming back to me, if Phaelene and her magic are working.

_*We’re both working just fine little panther, he’ll be shifting soon. But first, it’s your turn.*_

My turn?

The volume of Phaelene’s chanting changes. It’s clearer, louder, more in my head than around it like it was. I still don’t have a clue what language she’s using, but I can almost taste the words as she says them, watch them spin around my head, wrapping me in another cocoon.

What’s going on?

_*A present, Michael. My gift, to you. And to your Sean.*_

He’s not my Sean.

_*Michael, lie to whoever you think you have to remain sane and safe, but never lie to yourself.*_

He is my Sean.

_*Good boy. Now just relax.*_

My Se- fuck! What the hell are you doing, Phaelene?

_*I said relax, Michael. Sean’s not the only one I’m healing.*_

It’s hard to be calm when there seems to fire snaking up your spine. My shoulders roll into the almost pain, but it’s reflex more than anything. I can feel the itch as the skin knits like the teeth of a metal zipper being grated against each other before interlocking together. I know there’s a burn, some pain. But it’s there, in front of the foggy window and I can’t touch it, so its hurt is muted. 

The flames move downward, wrapping around my thighs and I can vaguely feel the roll of the muscles as they mend, feel the skin stretching and knitting over the scarred crevices dug into me. My head doesn’t see the marks disappearing though, like I thought it would. It sees them sinking into me, into my soul. 

_*They’re a part of you, Michael. Not everything that makes us what we are is good, but not all the bad leads us into more pain.*_

If you’re gonna live in my head, Phaelene, you’re gonna have to learn how to say stuff so I fucking understand what the hell you’re talking about.

_*Just remember that just because the journey was horrific, it doesn’t make the destination any less perfect.*_

I’ll remember, Phaelene. I’ll remember that the voice in my head is prone to talking in riddles and making fuck all sense.

_*You’re in an asylum, Michael, sense is something we’ve supposed to have lost.*_

Fuck you.

Phaelene’s laughter sounds so much like wind chimes, I want to shift my face into a breeze that just isn’t there.

_*One day it will be, my little panther. Right now, Sean needs a gentle push to help him shift. Are you ready for this, Michael?*_

What do you need me to do?

_*As soon Sean takes control of his shift, I’m going to leave you, Michael. Just get out of his way, and remember that it is still Sean inside the skin you’ll see.*_

You keep telling me to remember stuff. Does my brain look like Swiss cheese to you or something, Phaelene? I know who he is. And what do you mean, you’re leaving? Aren’t you, you know, kind of stuck?

_*Stuck, yes, but not stuck solely within you, Michael. There are others that share my munin. You have Sean, Michael, and as saccharine as it sounds, treasure him. Others don’t have the kind of guard for their sanity he gives you. But if you need me, my name is all you need to utter.*_

Conversation over, obviously, because I hear Phaelene chanting again, see hands I have no control over undo the ripped rags that were Sean’s jeans and slide them down his legs. As I watch my hands smooth over his calf muscles, his back arches. The first noise from his throat is my name and as my hands slip up over his thighs, I can suddenly feel the coarse scratch of hair under them. 

It’s my eyes I’m looking through now. Everything’s clear, there’s no fog-covered window.

My name comes from Sean again. This time, it’s curse, prayer and warning all together in a strangled scream. I don’t want to leave my spot beside him, but as of now this all just a little too real. Crab walking my way backwards, I don’t stop when I feel cloth beneath my hands. I don’t stop until I smack into the wall hard enough to make my ears ring.

Sean’s back bows harder, his head pulled up and back until it rests on his spine. His fingers try to claw into the floor. He’s done this before...why is he...

No, I’m not fucking slow, why do you ask?

“Sean? You need to shift, to finishing healing. I’m fine. Do what you need to, please.”

He turns, I think he nods, and the word he moans sounds like ‘sorry.’ Then his head drops between his forearms as his legs start to curl up under him. I can see the way he breathes, almost mediating his body into relaxing with just a few deep inhales. The ripple of muscle starts somewhere around his shoulders, rolling down his back, into his legs, over and over as his spine lengthens, pulling up and his ribs seem to cave inward. His legs, still rolling with movement, come up to join into his torso, the muscles of his thighs joining into the ones on his back and when my eyes shift from what are now hind quarters, I can see that his arms are shortening, joining into his torso just as his legs did.

Still the ripple of skin and muscle goes on until the hair on Sean’s head starts to retract, disappearing into nothing, only to be replaced by this...this short black-blue silk fur that follows the roll down his back like one final wave breaking on the shore, because as it covers Sean, the movement stops. 

There are no feet at the end of his legs now, just huge paws. With claws. My eyes glance over the powerful muscles I can see just below the silken velvet of the fur. They’re being held so tense, so still. I keep looking for some colour, a tone, anything but black.

Not black.

More pads of cat feet where hands should be. More claws. More black.

Then, as if he can feel my gaze, his head finally rises from between his forelegs, turning slowly, until I see his amber eyes. The same amber eyes Sean has shown me, once, in anger.

“You’re a fucking panther!”

His head bows in a slow nod, his stare never leaving my face.

_*"No, sorry, not into cannibalism."*_

His eyes tell me he knows the words my brain is echoing around my skull.

“That was not fucking warning me, you asshole! When? When Sean? When were you going to tell me you were the same kind of monster that attacked me? When, Sean? When?” 

He hasn’t moved, not a step closer, and yet I still want to crawl through the wall to get further away from him. This isn’t happening! My Sean cannot be the same creature as the one that slipped from the shadows, hunted me like prey, wounded me, then hunted again, stalking, waiting to play some more. 

How does he stand so still? Does he have to watch me like I hold something important to him in the palm of my hand?

“Fuck you, Sean!”

His head drops in defeat.

My hands wind in my hair, pulling at it, making it sting. I’m trying not to yell, but I want to scream. I want him to see the same betrayal I do.

_*”Being a were can't turn you into something you didn't already have in you as a human.”*_

Remembered words that so aren’t helping right now.

“Fuck you!”

Flattened hands scrub over my face, my fingers scoring red lines over my closed eyes at they move downwards. When my eyes open, Sean’s moved. In the corner furthest away from me, he’s moulded himself into the wedge, his...his legs, all twisted together, his head, just laying, ear down ward on the cold concrete, staring in the general direction of the roof. Somehow, though, I doubt he’s seeing it.

Why am I sure that if he was in human form, there’d be tears in those vacant eyes now?

Phaelene’s not here, but still her quiet words come back to me.

_*“Remember that it is Sean inside the skin you’ll see.”*_

“Sean?”

He moves enough to look at me, nothing more.

“I’m scared.”

The blink of his eyelids is slow, like he’s saying ‘I know.’ But that’s the only movement he makes.

He’s not coming any closer anytime soon, is he?

I can do this. I have to do this. This is Sean, not some childish monster with a mean streak a mile wide.

It’s Sean

I can do this.

I’m beginning to think neither of us will ever walk upright like humans again because this is me crawling again, over to Sean. I don’t have to look to know the way he tenses, the way the muscles seem frozen under his coat. His eyes never leave me, don’t even blink, as they watch me coming toward him. I end up sprawled on my stomach, flinching at the cold, my chin resting on an arm folded in front of me. If I moved an inch forward, I’d be pushing against his front paws.

It’s weird to be looking into these bright amber eyes, instead of the hot chocolate brown ones I normally see peering out from behind Sean’s hair.

Sean’s still in there, though.

“Can I...can I touch you?”

Again there’s a slow blink of his eyes, though this time I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to tell me. He’s still watching me, waiting.

I’m not the only one that’s scared here, am I?

Reaching out, the hand I’m not leaning on hovers over what I guess is now his shoulder. Sean’s eyes dart between it and my face. I can’t help but see how he’s still rigidly holding himself locked where he lays.

Over and over, my brain keeps recycling the sentence. Sean, this is Sean.

My palm brushes over his shoulder, just enough to feel the smoothness of the hair. No matter how much it looked like velvet, I was still expecting it to be coarse under my touch. But even at that barely a touch, I can see Sean tense that little extra bit. Much more of this and his muscles are going to snap.

“Sean, relax. The shift was meant to heal you, not wind you tight enough to break in two. I’m not going to freak, not again. I’m already overdrawn on my freak allotment for the next three decades or so.” 

I knew I was going to say the words, but I didn’t realise they’d be the truth. I’m not going to freak. This is Sean, and I’m safe.

His muscles give a fraction as my hand slides over him a second time, over his back, slightly down his spine. I can feel him release his hold on himself as I stroke. I feel the power that the flesh beneath my touch has. I’ve felt it before, sliding my palms up Sean’s back as I kissed him. The coat beneath my fingers is raw silk laid over steel, but his skin slick with sweat is just as smooth, just as strong. 

Just as Sean.

My fingernails dig into the fur, dragging along the skin under it, dragging back against the nap of his coat. He purrs. He fucking purrs!

“Like that, do you?”

Leaning in, closing the small gap between our heads, he bumps mine to the side, baring my neck to him. It’d be so easy for him to forget, nipping at me with those sabre-like teeth. But he doesn’t. He bends, rubbing the silken softness of his coat over the bare flesh.

Okay, I’m getting horny here. That’s not what this is meant to be about. 

Is it?

With a grace like I’ve never seen, Sean nudges my head back down onto my arm, then rolls himself to his feet. Stepping over me, flicking at my back with his tail as he moves.

He couldn’t be saying ‘look at me’ any more obviously, even if he’d shouted it. 

When I sit up and turn to face him, he’s pawing at the pallet.

“You’re claiming the bed as yours tonight?”

Can cats roll their eyes?

He stalks in my direction, moving behind me. There’s a moment’s hesitation before he knocks gently at my shoulder blade.

I just want to keep feeling the pile of his fur move against my skin.

The head at my shoulder gets more insistent.

“You want me over there?”

This time his head rubs along my spine, like he’s nodding yes.

And I’m back to crawling, moving the few feet there is between here and where Sean wants me. This is bizarre, to say the very least. Sitting down, I’m in the position one of us always seems adopt. Back against the brick wall, legs slightly open, spread out in front of me.

“I’m here, Sean. Now what?”

Fuck, there just such a grace to the way he moves when he’s like this. With each step, the blue- black of his coat moves like shot silk. With every step, the light on his muscles changes, almost dances, showing the strength the almost vulnerable coat hides. If this happens in this kind of non-existent light, what would he look like in the open of the night, under the moon, running with all his might?

There’s a voice in my head, trying to tell me I’ve already seen what he’d look like. But that was different. That wasn’t Sean.

One day. One day I’ll watch while he runs.

Just for the record, there’s nothing like a huge cat butting against your foot to derail your train of thought. Once he knows my attention is his, his continues rubbing his jawbone over the ball of my foot. Never do his eyes break the connection they have with mine, until with one last nudge of his nose, his vision drops to my lap, questioning. 

That movement I know. 

Moving my legs just that much further apart, I pat at one thigh.

“It’s okay, Sean. Please, I want to feel you.”

And I do. I want to feel him against me, want to pet him just to hear him purr. Though right now, all I can do is smile as the panther in front me does exactly what the man did a few days ago. He moves toward me until his head is on my thigh, then just allows the rest of him fall where it lands. Sprawling between my legs, paws resting against the leg his head’s not lying on.

Touching me, any way, every way, he can.

Such a dumb fucking thing, and yet so purely the Sean I know, it brings home to me, in ways that nothing else could have ever done, that this is Sean. 

This is my Sean.

Who’s currently pawing at my leg like he wants something.

“What?” My hand slips into the fur toward the back of his head. “You want your ears scratched?”

The look that earns me tells me I’m going to pay for that remark. Of course, he starts to purr and arch into my moving fingers halfway through giving me his death glare, so I’ll deal. 

Okay, maybe this ear scratching thing wasn’t as good an idea as I thought it was. Sean pushing his skull back into my fingers brings his head up enough for his fur to brush over the bare skin of my stomach. I can’t help the gasp that leaves my mouth, but when he stills I wish I had.

Before I can stop him, he’s upright, and moving backward.

“No!”

His head is between my knees when it stops.

“It’s okay, Sean, really. You didn’t scare me. But will I scare you if I tell you it felt nice? As in I want more of it, now, nice?”

Now it’s me that wants to look away. I did just tell him I’m getting off on having him rub against me, didn't I? Talk about kinky, Inez.

Though, the look in Sean’s eyes says he doesn’t exactly believe me. Convincing him ought to be fun.

Leaning toward Sean enough that my fingers can reach him, I slide them into the fur on his neck, moving them down toward his chest, my palm smoothing over the tunnels they make.

“You’ve never felt this under your hand, have you, Sean? You have no idea how soft it is, do you? It’s like silk and velvet all woven together and then laid over the strongest living stone there could ever be. Such an incredible paradox. One day, when you’re so well fucked that it’s all you can do to just lay down with your arms, your legs and your hair all spread over satin sheets covering a bed that’s so big that even sprawled out like that you can’t reach the edges, that’s when I’m going to shift for you. I’m going to move, starting at your feet, smoothing fur over your calf muscles, up over you thighs. Drag myself over your chest, nuzzling at your neck before going back down to pet the one part of you that’ll be begging to be touched by then.”

And fuck! That whole little daydream might have just backfired on me, big fucking time.

“Would you touch me, Sean? Cover me in your scent? Cover me in you? Please?”

He bumps at my shoulder until I lean back against the wall. His eyes move to my lap where, even through my jeans, my hard-on is impossible to hide. One step forward and his head is back in my groin, rubbing over my sex.

“Sean? I’d rather not come in my jeans, if it’s all the same to you.” 

Panting that really wasn’t the way I wanted to go, but at this point in time, who cares.

But he stops. I whine, but he still stops, backing away from me again, stilling as he gets to my ankles. I swear to the pixie’s that there’s laughter in his eyes as he bites at the bottom of my jeans, tugging at them when they’re caught between his teeth.

Way to be subtle, Sean. 

“You want me to take them off then?’

He pulls once more, before backing off, and waiting. Sean watches as I stand, pushing my jeans and boxers down my legs. Briefly it flits through my mind to tease him as I strip, but the thought gets thrown out just as quickly. I just want to feel him now. There’ll be plenty of time for playing later.

Sean thinks he knows, but he doesn’t, not yet. In here or out there, he has no idea how badly he’s stuck with me.

Straightening up, not hiding myself from him, is oddly easy. Or it was, until his head knocks against the back of my thigh. I’m moaning even before he slides his way downward, pushing gently behind my knee. 

If the drop to my knees hurt, I wouldn’t know it. Sean’s tail is flicking at my back as I fall, just once or twice as he moves to stand before me. He’s shifting himself downward so that the side of his head, neck and shoulder all rub over my chest. He’s not aiming to tease, just touch, but he hits the first mark anyway.

My hands come up, dragging fingers along his spine, against the grain of his fur. The purr moving along his neck vibrates though the muscle, into my chest. Short puffs of warm air fan across my chest as he moves. I can’t stop my hands from clenching in the short pile at the rough swipe of a tongue over my nipple. Sean stops enough to watch it bead, then again slips his tongue out to cover my nipple, spiralling it around the tight bud.

“Fuck, Sean... I need to lay down or fall on top of you, your choice.”

One cheek rubs over my pecs, just once, before he backs off, waiting for me. Why I don’t know, all I do is fall forward and roll onto my back. I’ll deal with the bruises later, right now I just want Sean.

And Sean, by the way, doesn’t seem to be in much of hurry. He’s just standing there, watching. 

One last time to change my mind, huh?

“Yes, I know it’s you in there Sean. Yes, I want this. Now, for the love of Janus, get your four-legged ass over here.”

There’s almost a smile on his face at my demands, why?

Ohhhhh, who the fuck cares. Again, his tail whips at my hip as he moves, nudging my legs until they spread enough for him to walk between them. Once he’s past my knees, again he lets his legs brush along the skin of my inner leg. Instead of stopping where I thought he would, where I want him to, Sean steps his feet either side of my hips, lowering his underbelly to drag along my cock as he keeps moving up my torso.

When he stops, his front feet are on either side of my shoulders, his back feet still between my thighs and his tail almost managing to flick at one hip, then the other. And my body is covered. He has every inch of torso covered in him, pressing himself against me, not moving, just laying there, keeping enough of his weight to himself as not to smother me.

Amber eyes are searching my face, looking for something I can hope they find.

I’d give him whatever answers he needs to start moving, I’m just too caught up in the weight of his genitals beside mine and trying not to hump him. There’s a line there that probably shouldn’t be crossed, and I guess this is me crossing it any way. My hips start to, not hump, more like grind against him. There’s no pressure, just feeling. My head tilts back, baring my neck as my eyes drift closed.

“Yo-yours, Sean. Touch me. Cover me in your scent, make one that’s ours, please.”

His tongue is like wet sandpaper being drawn along the tendons in my neck and my mewl is like nothing I’ve ever heard from my mouth before. 

He has whatever he needs though, because he’s slipping backward, licking down my chest, over my nipples, rubbing his jawbone over me in patterns that only make sense to him. All I know is that by the time his mouth is back at my groin, every inch of me has been tasted, rubbed, petted.

And I’m begging. Loudly. 

I doubt any of the words coming from my mouth actually make sense. It’s some weird amalgamation of Sean’s name, wanting more, needing more and just demanding he hurry the fuck up.

Just for a second, he lays his head on my hip, like he’s waiting for me to calm down. Later, Sean, I’ll get to calming down later. When you’re laying beside me and I’m being sappy enough to lay there and listen to you snore.

“Move, Sean. Please?”

I guess the poke at my legs is my answer. Spreading them wider, I still feel the soft pile of Sean’s fur against me, and that fucking incredible rough wetness of his tongue being lapped over my scrotum. My eyes, still shut, clench tight enough for white spots to start dancing behind my eyelids. My hands start to seek any part of Sean they can reach, but have to be content with just feeling his head beneath them.

His tongue slides over me, flicking at my balls, then pushing them out of the way to press against that small patch of flesh behind them.

I’m the one with a continual whimpering stream of nonsense leaving his mouth.

“FuckSeanmoremovefuckjustmakemecome...”

And the only move he makes is a quick, wild shake of his head that sends my hands flying. Automatically I reach back wanting to touch him, but he’s pulling from away, tossing his head from side to side.

“No?”

The slow blink is back, and Sean’s coming closer again. My hands rest on my stomach, clasping together. If he doesn’t want me to touch, I guess I’m not touching.

But he is, and...

“Fuckkkk!”

I don’t have the words to... that tongue is dragging itself up the vein on the underside of my cock. The rough surface is firing nerve ends I had no idea I even fucking had. The meltdown of my brain becomes final as Sean laps at the precum leaking from my sex.

“Seannnnn. Now, please. Now.”

I can still feel the silk of his coat between my legs, feel him reaching over my groin, sliding more fur over my cock as I whimper.

When he gets to where my hands are tangled together and my knuckles are bloodless, he pushes his nose at them until I get the hint and let them fall apart.

He knows I’m watching him, his eyes are trying to tell me what he can’t say.

“Tell me later, Sean. The only way I’m going to freak now is if you don’t finish me.”

Lifting my left hand, I brush the back of it over Sean’s face, feel the coarse poke of whiskers as he turns into it, purring.

So I pet him again, just to hear him purr harder. 

Dropping my hand back to my gut, for the first time Sean opens his mouth enough for me to see his teeth.

“Not flinching, Sean. Deal with it.”

His eyes don’t blink, never stray from mine as he moves, taking my fist into his mouth, so very gently so that the points of his teeth don’t even dimple my skin. He pulls back until his jaw is over my cock, dropping his mouthful before pushing my fingers to my sex.

Tongue and fur, complete contrast, smooth over me as my fingers curl around my cock. I pull upward and Sean’s mouth follows my every move. My fingers spread over the leaking head and his tongue slips between them, tasting me.

Squeezing tighter, my fist is nothing more than a means to an end. All I can sense is Sean’s presence, all I can feel is Sean’s mouth, his fur, his breath.

My eyes snap shut and long dark curls hiding chocolate eyes fill my mind’s eye. With no effort, the image bleeds into amber eyes and black-blue silk.

One last wet lap of his tongue is all it takes. I’m coming, arching against Sean, not even feeling myself as I milk the orgasm. I just never want to forget the feel of Sean like this. Of his gentle. Of his trust.

“Sean! So good, fuck. So good.”

So very good.

I’m still swimming in sensation when Sean start to lick the cum from my fingers, from my stomach. The rough laughter I can almost hear must be mine, but in all seriousness, I think I just broke something inside my brain.

I’m floating as Sean lays full length beside me, his purr echoing along his chest, into my side where they’re pushed together, still matching even in these forms, like two halves of a unique whole.

My last thought before I pass out?

How soon before I can do this for him?

~*~

~Sean’s POV~

I have no fucking idea how long I’ve been standing under the sleet falling from the shower head, but my fingers are blue and my toes are so numb I’d have to look down to make sure they’re still there.

If I had an ounce of sense I’d get out. Yep. Still standing here. And I’ve started to shake. Not shiver. Shake.

Get out of the fucking shower, Kinney. Now! While you actually still have control over your hands. 

Thirty seconds later I’ve stopped the water. I wonder if the shaking will help me drip-dry any quicker?

“Sean?”

Lumpy’s awake. Fuck.

But yeah, even as I’m cursing, I’m moving. Wet, numb feet help me to slide into the edge of the fucking toilet bowl. I don’t even want to think about the lump forming where my kneecap used to be before I just dislocated it.

At the risk of repeating myself, fuck.

“Sean!”

Awake and fucking panicking. Why?

I’d rather not admit to the perverse part of my brain that likes the fact it’s my name and not Randy’s that he screams, but that won’t mean it isn’t there anyway. How about I just focus on the big part that’s wondering why Lumpy is having nightmares again. 

A week after he watched me shift.

Why he can’t even have his fucking breakdowns when I’m expecting them? Because for the past week I’ve been working on one of my own and I kind of had that pencilled in to do today.

And yes, I am still the one tripping over myself, and anything else even remotely in my way, to get to him. All things considered, I’d be in less pain and beside him quicker if I hadn’t hurried.

I don’t kneel beside him when I get back to the pallet, I fall beside him. Feeling is returning to my feet and that feeling is the pain throbbing from my knees downward. 

I was wrong though, Mike isn’t awake. Rocking, moaning, whimpering and muttering a mumble jumble of words, the only one of which I can make out being my name, yep, he’s doing all of that. But he isn’t conscious. Not even the drip of freezing water over his back as I shake at his shoulder seems to make any difference.

“Mike! Wake the fuck up already, you’re dreaming!” Nothing. His eyes seem stuck in a REM cycle from hell and the sound spilling from his mouth has passed freaked and is gaining on hysterical. “Lumpy, please, you’re scaring me, wake up!”

Still nothing.

Dripping wet and shaking from the cold - not fear, never fear - I try to pull Mike’s arms from where they’re wrapped over his chest, tight enough to make breathing more than a little difficult for him. Even with the strength I can draw on, he’s fighting me. That more than anything tells me the full moon is getting nearer. The panicked flicker of his eyes beneath their lids and the stream of noise doesn’t stop when I finally get his arms to his sides and pull him against my torso. His voice is muffled against my chest now, but I can hear mine as I rock him. I can hear it telling him it’s only me, that I won’t hurt him, that if he wants, I will hunt down and maim whoever did this to him. And even if he doesn’t want it, it’s still an option worth looking at. Over and over we rock, over and over I tell him, “It’s just me, just Sean.” One hand pets his hair, the other smooths over his spine. I have no idea if either touch is helping him, but I’ve stopped shaking. I pretty much did that as soon as I felt his heart beat against my ribs, felt his heat slip past the cold skin incasing me.

I don’t really notice when the rocking becomes more me than us. And when his hands slide around my waist, all I do is close my eyes, grateful for the touch. But I finally figure out Lumpy is awake, for real and everything this time, when he kisses somewhere above my right nipple, before tugging on my hair and mumbling something about not being able to breathe.

Pulling back, I mutter something that could resemble ‘sorry,’ but Mike doesn’t smile like I’m expecting him too.

He doesn’t even raise his head.

“Lumpy?”

C’mon Mike, my chest isn’t that interesting.

“Another nightmare?”

The sum total of his reaction? His fingers dig into the small of my back so damn quickly I’m not sure if the quick sting is actually in my back or just in my mind.

“At the risk of seeming to be the heartless bastard I probably am, I thought we were past this, and by this I mean the hiding bullshit and, possibly, the nightmares. So you’re gonna have to look at me, Mike. No matter how hard you try, you can’t wish either of us out of here. We’d be in the Bahamas by now if that was possible.”

I said you had to look at me, Lumpy, not once did I mention pushing me away. But that’s what he’s doing anyway. So now I’m sitting here, naked, though I’m not as wet as I was, waiting for the kick in the teeth I can’t help but think is coming. Mike’s pulled himself up, sitting cross-legged with his feet poked into the gap between my legs, which are just kind of spread outward. He’s not touching me, though. No, he’s made damn sure not so much as our leg hairs are within distance of each other.

Not touching and still not fucking looking at me. The blanket on our bed, however, seems to be the most interesting thing he’s seen since my chest.

“What do you want me to say, Lumpy? I’m sorry? I can do that in heartbeat. Just tell me what I’m apologising for first, please?”

My fingers are counting bumps on my knees, because if I unclench them from there, they’ll reach for him. And surprisingly enough, I don’t deal with rejection all that well.

They can probably hear the breath Lumpy exhales in the next wing, but the words that ride that breath out of his mouth are quiet. Too quiet.

“Don’t apologise, Sean. I don’t want any more empty words. How about you fill up some of the ones you’ve already given me?”

Hello?

“I’m confused, Mike.” 

“Yeah, I know.” He taps on the pallet twice before lifting his head and dragging a hand through his hair to pull it all away from his face. Whatever he was hiding from, he’s not scared of it any more. Or he is, and he’s still going to meet it head on. “Why won’t you ask what you want to know?” 

When did this go from his nightmares to my waking hell? Did I miss that left turn at Albuquerque? 

“Ahhh, Mike, what does this have to do with-“

“Everything, Sean! Do you want to know what my nightmares are about right now? They start just like they always did. The moon’s so beautiful, so full and bright, but it’s not Randy standing beside me when I turn to speak, it’s you. And you’re smiling and the curls of your hair are almost forming some weird ass fucking halo around your head. Then I can hear the same whipcracking snarl and it snaps my head around, away from you, and while there’s barely a second before I feel his claws cutting into my skin, all I can think of is to warn you, tell you to run, make sure you’re safe. But when I turn, you’re not there, you’re just gone. And while I can still feel everything that monster is doing to me, it doesn’t hurt, not like it should, not like I know it does. What hurts is you were there, and then you weren‘t. Just like you were with me here, then you started to pull away. Started to leave me, even if it was just in your mind, and you’ve put more distance between us than this fucking cell should allow you to do.”

There’s nothing I want more than to look away from Mike now, just break his gaze for just a second, anything that’ll let me get the grip back I’ve obviously lost. But there’s no way in hell he’s going to let me do that right now. I feel like I’m slipping off the edge of a cliff and watching the whole thing in slow motion as I scramble, trying to grab at anything that’ll stop me from going over.

“Take now for example, Sean. You’re fingers are bloodless and adding to the bruising on your knees you’re gripping them that hard, rather than just be the first to reach out and touch me. Never mind the fact you’re shaking, from cold and only the gods might know what else. I’m just here, I won’t let you fall.”

He doesn’t touch me, not even then, just lays his hands, palms up, on the blankets between us. I can do this, after this, everything else should be easy. But it’s like the first time I kissed him, something so little means so very much. Mike’s skin is rough to my touch, his hands aren’t ones that have never known hard work, but there’s a heat that radiates from them. And just one movement from me brings me to the source of the warmth I need to thaw me. 

It’s my turn to find the blanket has the meaning of life now.

“What happened while I was out? Why aren’t you scarred any more? How the fuck did you save me?”

Opening my mouth leads to me turning into a blathering idiot, obviously. Yeah, I want to know the answers, but I had planned on building up to the questions, or at the very least, actually phrasing them as questions rather than demands for answers.

Yet again, we can chalk something else up to Kinney needing remedial lessons on how to interact with an actual member of the human race.

“Is that why you’ve been pulling away from me, Sean? All you need is the answers to those questions? Why the fuck didn’t you ask? I’m the new were here, I’m the one trying to follow your lead! You didn’t bring it up and I didn’t know how too! So instead I watched you be here, with me, and yet pull into your own little world that didn’t include me at the same time. For fuck’s sake, Sean, this talking thing doesn’t just work one way. You thought we were done with the nightmares. I thought we were getting somewhere with this whole pard, family, us thing.”

The ‘us’ thing. Yeah, there’s the kicker. The rest is almost too easy to deal with, but that...that brings me to my knees with no idea how I fucking got there.

“I’m...I’m sorry. Mike, I know enough about weres to know I’m alpha and as far as I can tell, you aren‘t. But you healed me, you healed you, and you shouldn’t have been able to do either. With or with out blood. Hell throw in Puff the Magic Dragon, and as totalled as I was, you still shouldn’t have been able to do it. Yet you did.” Finally my eyes leave our joined hands and meet Mike’s. They’re just like brown puddles of feelings. Hiding what’s going through his head doesn’t even enter his mind. I hope that, one day, I can to that, too. “I don’t understand and I’m scared, Lumpy. And as illogical as it sounds, I’m fucking pissed about it too!”

The squeeze he gives my hands doesn’t really have a reason behind it that I can see, and I’ll admit to liking it, even if it does help fuck all.

“I didn’t heal you, Sean.”

The fuck?

“I’m sorry, Lumpy, but what on earth are you fucking babbling about? If you didn’t heal me, who did? Our fairy godmother?”

“She said to call her our fairy weremother, but near enough.”

Mike’s serious, he’s fucking serious! He’s also obviously lost his marbles.

“Sean, I can explain, and I’m as sane as you are.”

“Lumpy, since when am I sane? But please, explain. For the love of strawberries and whipped cream, explain.”

Now he fucking fidgets, looking at me, then his eyes darting to the wall, before they come back to me and then just drift closed and he nods, slowly, like he’s listening and saying ‘I understand.’ His eyes open and he squirms closer before he speaks, wriggling his hips until he’s sitting between my legs, his thighs draped over mine. My hands are still held tightly within his.

“Her name is Phaelene. She is...was...okay is, an alpha were who also has a lovely little magic chaser to her power. She, ummm, fuck it, she kind of lives in my brain.”

They fucking broke my Lumpy! 

“Fuck babbling, what the fuck did they do to you while I was gone, Mike? You’re sitting here, calmly telling me a voice in your head healed both of us. And I’m just supposed to think what? Gee thanks, I always wanted an insane, broken boyfriend? I’m sorry, but-“

His head shakes violently enough to have his hair swinging all over the place. Okay, so with all that hair, a little movement goes along way.

“I’m not nuts, Sean. I just didn’t explain that all that well. Remember the night after I first came to? I ate your slop as well as mine? That slop was recycled body parts, in this case recycled Phaelene body parts. I ate part of her remains, and I share her munin, her spirit. When I want her, her voice is in my head. And, I know I didn’t invent her, because if I had, I’d have invented a voice with a lot less fucking attitude.”

“Fuck.” 

I’m sure there is something I can add to that statement, if I think about it. I’m trying not to think about it. I really am.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I said, after I finished freaking out. I was the one that started to feed you, Sean. I cut my palm, just like you did, and felt you start to suck the blood you needed from me. Then Phaelene took over, chanting, doing whatever she needed to get you to the point where you could shift and finish healing. I had no idea what she was going to do anything to me. I didn’t care about my fucking scars, except...except that they might remind you that I was damaged...” Mike races on before I can seize on those words like he knows I want to. “Then you shifted and I panicked, despite everything you, and Phaelene, had told me and shown me. Once I got over that, well, you know what happened then, and if you don’t know how much I enjoyed it, I can tell you, at length. But I kind of forgot about everything that went before that.”

Now that’s a Reader’s Digest version if I ever heard one.

And Mike’s waiting for me to say something, I just have no fucking idea what. Open mouth, try not to insert foot, Kinney.

“Phaelene?”

He nods.

“Okay.”

He waits.

What else can I fucking say? No? Get away from me? My head’s spinning, and if I let myself, there’d be a hell of a freak out just around the corner. One consisting of much ranting and screaming and all things irrational. But Mike doesn’t deserve that. He and his voice saved my life. He is quickly becoming my life. My brain can spin all it wants as long as it’s stuck in neutral.

Mike’s still waiting. Yet again I open my mouth, still having no idea what so ever what will come out.

“I’m sorry. I know I said that already, but I am. I guess just expected to be the teacher here, Mike. The fact I’m not takes one more thing from me that I’d like to give you. But when it all boils down to it, I know next to fucking nothing. And I hate that. I want to be someone you need, rather than just somebody the gods dumped on you. I want to be the person you’d chose, if you were given a choice. And I feel like to be that I need to able to show you I am useful. That I’m here for a reason other than I’m a good lay.”

The touch of his fingers against one cheek is soft and something I turn into like a normal person would turn toward the heat of the sun. His palm rubs against my cheek and for the first time I feel the raised skin of...Grabbing his hand, I pull it back down to my lap, turning it over and laying mine next it to and we both see what we’d missed.

Mike’s voice didn’t heal all our scars. Running from thumb to wrist on my hand, then echoed on Mike’s, is a curved silver line, faded, but still there. Where I cut to save Lumpy, where Mike cut to save me. The fingers of my other hand reach up to slowly trace one line, then the other. Part of our history is in these marks, an important part. There’s a lesson in them too, somewhere, if I can find it.

Some things are important, some aren‘t.

Don’t sweat the small shit.

Ignoring his mark completely, Mike brings my hand to his lips, kissing it softly before lowering it again, curling our hands together so both scars are touching each other, but hidden from view. When four hands are tangled together, that’s when he speaks.

“Do you honestly think I care, Sean? I don’t want a walking encyclopedia of the how’s and where’s of were creatures. To be honest, I like the fact we’re learning together. Alpha, beta, you once told me we were equals, what worked for me, worked for you, so don’t fucking change the rules on me now. All I want, all I need, is you! Fuck everything else, if you’re here with me, somehow it’ll all turn out okay. And if it doesn‘t, well fuck it then, too. You’ll still be stuck in the mess we’ve made with me.” One of his hands leaves our other three and moves up into my hair, clutching tight in the loose curls, pulling enough to make it sting. Make me look. Make me listen. “You’re what keeps the nightmares away, Sean.”

Leaning in, Mike kisses me, so softly that it’s barely more than the breath from his lungs touching my lips.

“You.”

Letting go of my hair, Mike’s hand falls down to the small of my back and its mate moves from our laps to slide around my rib cage, joining the other in pulling me to him. Mine just go to Mike’s hips, holding on tight and pulling him closer still.

“So, now will you explain to me why you’re not touching me and you’re jerking off in a freezing cold shower every morning?”

Fuck! What is it with these left turns I keep missing?

As I open and close my mouth, Mike buries his head in my neck, his shoulders shaking as he tries not to laugh. Out loud, at least.

“See if I go all gentlemanly on you ever again, Inez. I didn’t want to rush you, you stupid prick.”

Even though the words are spoken against my neck, they’re still clear enough.

“How about we file gentlemanly under the category of another thing I don’t need from you?” Pulling back, Mike shakes the hair from his face as best he can without actually touching it because his hands are kind of busy, slipping down below the waistband of my jeans, tickling over whatever skin they can find.

“One last time, Sean. I want you. Smart-assed, grumpy, pissy, opera-loving you. I may not be ready to bottom for you, but I still need you. If not to fuck, then how about to touch? To touch me? If I didn’t freak when a panther blew me, I’m not going to freak at anything you could possibly want.” A finger pokes at my ribs. “Am I?”

“Maybe not, but it’s not like I can get hold of rubber chicken and a bicycle pump in here, is it?” 

I’m a good boy, I wait until he stops laughing before I continue. But only because I can’t think of anything other than how incredible he is as I watch him.

“You’ll ask when you’re ready? To bottom? Because I won’t ask you, Mike, ever. It’ll come completely from you, or not at all.”

“I’ll ask. You’ll let me know when you’re ready to have that freak out about Phaelene you’ve been busy clamping down for the past half an hour?”

“I’ll let you know.” 

Mike’s fingers are teasing the swell of my backside now, and he’s back to resting his head on my shoulder. Damn, just the warmth of his breath on my neck makes me hard. Or harder. “Ahh, about that touching thing. Do you want to, now?”

“I thought I already was.”

As Mike’s tongue traces the tendons in my neck as he pushes me down, leaving me flat on my back and him on all fours above me.

“Gonna argue?”

“Not on your fucking life.” Just for a second, I watch shadows drift across Mike’s face. They aren’t staying, not now. “It’ll be okay, Lumpy, we’ll get there. Together.”

He nods, smiles and that’s all he needs to do to become my waking wet dream. 

“Yeah. Together.”

I like that word. I get the feeling I’m going to like the way Mike’s planning on spending the next hour or so showing me how it works even better.

~*~

We might have a problem here. Or at the very least, I have a problem.

I was having the best dream about Lumpy, and a bed, and room service that actually served food. But I’m awake now.

“Lumpy, move your hand.”

It’s not that I don’t want it there, but it’s getting hard to clamp down on a beast that wants nothing more than to mark Mike as his, mine, ours.

Mike’s answer is damn close to a giggle, as the word “No” gets spoken against my shoulder

“Lumpy, I know you’ve already worked out the whole the fuller moon, the hornier us thing, and I’m having fun getting to prove it, but remember that whole ‘I won’t push you for more’ thing? It’s getting fucking hard to remind certain aspects of me why I made that promise. Now have some pity, and please move your hand.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Michael, please don’t make this any harder than it already is. My palms are as bruised as my knees at the moment just from clenching my fists to stop myself from jumping you as you get dressed after your shower.”

I promised him. I’d slit my throat before I broke that promise, but I had no fucking idea how hard it would be to keep my word. How could I? I’m getting to the stage where smacking myself while beating my head against the brick wall repeatedly is beginning to look like a reasonable alternative. I just have no idea what it’s an alternative to.

“You said you’d wait until I asked. I’m asking Sean, please? Fuck me?” 

Ohhhh, fuck. Handed what I want more than anything right now on a silver platter, and I can’t take it. Or I won’t, same difference. As crazy as it sounds, not now. Not when I know it’s just our queen bitch, the moon, fucking with him. With me. With us.

“Sean?”

The giggle’s gone from his voice now. He’s gone from laughing to unsure in 3.2 seconds, and I’m about to make it one hundred times worse.

“Sweet Janus, forgive me for saying this, but I can’t, Mike.”

Of course, he’s rolling away from me just as I’m moving over to grab him. No, you aren’t turning back into the lump, Mike. We have enough shifting to deal with in the next few days, thank you very fucking much.

Pulling him against me, our positions are exactly reversed from what they were five seconds ago.

“Are you going to sulk and get pissy, or are you going to listen to me?” I whisper into the cloud of hair I can’t help but bury my face in. 

“You said you wait until I asked. I asked, you said no. What else is there I could possibly need to listen to?”

“Maybe the reason I said ‘no’?”

I can feel the shrug his shoulders make beneath my chin. I can almost taste the bitterness in the words he damn near snarls.

“There’s not a lot to explain about the word ‘no,’ is there?”

“For fuck’s sake, Lumpy! Stop it, now! If you think for one second I don’t want to crawl so far into you that I could qualify as another of your organs, think again! Just the thought of sinking into you is enough to keep me hard for a week. It *has* kept me hard for the last week! But the moon is so close to being full and whether you realize it or not, she has you by the balls right now. I’m fucking greedy enough to want this request to come from you, and only from you.”

Mike squirms, how about that. He squirms enough that I have to relax the hold my arms have around his waist, and I was kind of enjoying the feel of his ass pressed against me. Turning himself around in the arms I loosened but refused to unclasp completely, Mike leans in to nip at my jaw line before resting his head against my shoulder.

“All the growing moon can make me do is shift. There’s no way even she could ever make me ask you to fuck me if I didn’t already want it so much it hurts. Not now. Not after...everything.”

Pushing himself in closer to my neck, so close I can feel his lips move, Mike continues.

“Do you want me, Sean? Yes or no?”

I wish it was that fucking simple, Mike. I really do.

“Yes. But-”

His head shakes.

“No buts, Sean.”

I can be brave, I can do this. Fuck, I’ve never wanted to hide myself away more than I want to right this second. Instead, I’m about to strip myself bare, finally laying my throat at his feet.

“There has to be a but, Lumpy. We’ve covered the whole stuck with each other fuck knows how many times, and sometimes I don’t think you realise exactly how long forever is. How long that would be to be connected to somebody you hate. I know it was something beyond the comprehension of my brain, until…I’m so fucking scared, Mike. I’m falling in love with you, and if you end up hating me because we rushed something that’ll still be there tomorrow, next week, next month, I’m not strong enough to survive that. I’m not going anywhere. We can always-“

While I spoke, Mike pulled himself back and by the time he put his fingertips against my mouth to stop the flow of verbal diarrhoea he’s eye level with me. Pure mischief lights his eyes, and it’s almost enough to send me to my knees to thank anybody that’ll listen to me any more. This is a look he used to wear a lot, before everything, isn’t it? 

“If you said anything after the part about falling in love with me, I think I missed it.”

But in less time than it takes my heart to beat or my eyes to blink, the light is gone. Like something else, something he only wishes he could forget just occurred to him.

“I know I can’t give you the gift I could have given you a month ago, but what I have, I want it to be yours.”

It takes more than I thought I had in me to not just shut my eyes and hide from the pain that takes over Mike’s face. But if he won’t hide from his pain, I’ll be fucked if I will.

“Lumpy, it wouldn’t matter if I was your first, or your thirty first. You letting me into your body would always be a gift. Every time you do it in our lifetimes will be a gift. But you know what? I will be your first. I will be your first lover, I am your first lover, because the animal that hurt you is something we’re not giving any fucking titles too. I’m not saying you should pretend everything’s fine and dandy, or that he never took something he had no right to from you, but don’t give him anything else, okay? Don’t keep feeding him your soul.” 

Mike opens his mouth but I have to get this out, all at once, or I’ll never find the words again. So my head shakes a quick no, and I continue.

“If the gift you mentioned is your virginity, I don’t know what to say, not really. Part of me wants to tell you that when you’re ready, in all and any way it matters, it will be mine. Yet part of me wants to ask if you feel any less for me because I can’t give you anything even close to the same thing.”

“Of course not! Don’t be so fucking stupid!”

“No Lumpy, that’s my line. Why is it different for me? Why don’t the same set of rules apply for both of us?”

He’s trying to pull out of my hold now, put distance between us. Oh yeah, like I’m going to let that happen Mike.

“It’s different. Rape is d-“

“Don’t even. We’ve sung this song once already, Mike. Okay, yes, it’s different. But don’t you get it yet? It happened to you, not because of you. You had nothing to do with the why of what happened. And you can’t be anything less than what you were because it happened. You didn’t ask for it, it’s not your fault. If anything, you’re more than what you were, because you’ve come through hell’s flames still one of the gentlest souls it’ll ever be my honor to know. It’s me that’ll be trying to make myself worthy of you, Lumpy. Not the other way around.”

Bending my head, this time Mike knows enough to know what I’m doing as my tongue laps softly over his closed lips. But I don’t get a chance to move that far away from his face before he pushes himself forward and, in turn, his tongue echoes my submission.

I get it, Lumpy. Equals. Neither of us above, neither of us unworthy of the other.

Both of us exactly what the other needs. And wants.

I hope.

“Please Sean, make love to me.”

There’s no way on this or any other planet I can say no to him again. And he knows it.

“Only until your bones turn to rubber. Then I have other plans.”

He’s smiling. My smile. The room’s not dark any more.

“The opera?”

“Of course. Aida amongst the pyramids has to be seen to be believe.” 

Before I even finish speaking, his smile is bubbling into laughter. And that’s when I know that with him around, the dark will never bother me again.

My arms tighten, wanting to feel him closer and it’s like that’s all Mike’s been waiting for because his laugh peters out and my pulling is turned into him pushing. Before I know it, I’m on my back with Lumpy lying between my slightly spread thighs.

Grinding his pelvis against mine, maddeningly not hard enough, Mike voices the thought running rampant through my mind as well.

“Tell me again, why don’t we sleep naked?”

Because if the fuckwits spring another surprise visit on us and we’re at least dressed part of the way, I can pretend the only reason you’re curled around me is that you were just seeking body warmth in the dead of night, that’s why, Lumpy.

“I don’t know, Mike. But can we get naked? Like now?”

“First you’re telling me no, now you’re nagging me to get naked. Make up your mind already, Kinney.”

He doesn’t want me too, but I can still hear the fear the kind of forced-amused tone of his voice can’t hide.

“My mind’s made up, have no fucking doubt about that, Lumpy. Both it and my cock know exactly what they want. And that’s pretty much to crawl inside you and never leave.”

Anything else I’d even thought about saying is gone as Mike leans forward enough to put us into a world of our own as his hair falls forward, surrounding us. I can feel the soft curls against my cheeks, my ears.

More hair smothers me Mike moves in closer, just pressing his closed mouth against mine. Slowly his lips relax and start to move, a gentle shifting of his mouth that doesn’t involve his tongue. And it’s almost more than anything else I’ve ever felt before. Because of what’s there, in his touch, not because of what isn‘t.

But when he does lick at my lips, asking silently for entry. Opening my mouth not only lets him in, it lets the whimpering sounds I’m not used to hearing from me, out.

No sooner is Mike’s tongue in me than it’s retreating so his teeth can come into play. Biting at my lips, making them swell under the pressure he’s exerting. Just the fact he wants me, wants this enough that his memory has given him the gift of forgetting, even for just a minute, is almost enough for me right now. I can’t help smiling at the thought of the word ‘almost’ as Mike pulls back enough to let me give him what he’s just given me, and my movements perfectly echo his.

Whether he knows it or not, he’s in total control, and I’ll be doing exactly nothing he hasn’t okayed by doing it to me first.

But both of us are fast reaching the point of fuck foreplay here, and while that’s kind of where I need Mike to be, neither of us are actually naked.

That really has to change. Like now.

After he finishes kissing me.

Finally he lifts his head, no further that he has to to be able breathe, leaving the curtain of his hair still surrounding us. But now his hips have started to move, they’re rubbing endless circles that knock our cocks together not nearly as often as I’d like. Mike’s hands grab at my shoulders, like he’s afraid he’s going to have to stop me from up and running away.

Oh yeah, that’s gonna happen.

“Sean?”

“Hmmm?”

I could get way too involved in the way his lips form my name.

“We, ahh, we have this positioning ass about, a-and despite our best efforts, our boxers aren’t melting from the friction.”

“Mmmm.”

Fuck, the feel of his hips grinding against mine is just about enough to get me off. Especially if he kisses me again.

“Sean!”

Mike’s stopped moving now. Completely. But the beads of sweat suddenly appearing on his forehead tell me this is far from easy for him either.

Oh yeah, he’s waiting for me to speak, isn’t he?

“Naked, yeah, I know Lumpy. We’ll get there, in a minute or three. But, you know, not right now, not today, but one day, we’re gonna be in this same position. And you’re gonna ride me, your neck arched, your head thrown back far enough that your hair will brush against my balls.”

That got him moving again. It’s just this random roll of his hips, like his only thought is pressure and contact, and as much of both as he can find. But it’s the mewl that’s in there that I want more of. I want it louder, longer.

I just want more.

“But not tonight.”

Wrapping my arms around Mike’s waist, it’s barely an effort to roll us over. Now it’s my hair that keeps us secluded. 

Again bending to lick over his lips, I can feel Mike smile as my tongue moves. He knows this movement now. Pulling back, just for a second, I watch that smile. Then I’m the one smiling as his hips start their quest for sensation again, and from the way he’s reaching upward, he’s not all that fussy about how he finds it.

“You know what’s going to happen tonight, Lumpy? Tonight I’m going to slide myself into you and then just sit there, feeling you pulse around me. And as I pull myself back, my hand is going to curl around your sex, sliding from the base to the tip, then back down again. Your precum slicking itself over you, and me, as I move.”

The laugh Mike lets loose seems a little frayed around the edges. 

Good.

“Not if you don’t get a fucking move on! Keep talking like that, Sean, and anything else will be kind of redundant.” 

Okay, so I wanted him horny, but maybe not that horny.

“You’re not coming without me buried in you, Lumpy. I can promise you that. But since you asked so nicely, I’ll speed it up.”

“Fuck you, Sean,” is the panted answer I get.

Both of us can hear the smile in my voice as I answer.

“Sorry, it’s my turn tonight. You’re just gonna have to wait.”

Squirming my body down a little, Mike groans a lot. Though I’m not sure if it’s because he likes the movement, or he’s pissed that I took away what he was happily humping. When my eyes are level with his collarbone, my head drops and, with nothing more that an open mouth, I kiss my way outwards from his neck. Reaching the top of his bicep, I nip at the gentle swell of flesh before moving my mouth down to the inside of his elbow, spiralling my tongue across his skin in wet, loose circles as I move. There’s another soft bite to the bend in his arm before I slip my mouth and body lower. Stopping at his wrist, I just rub my lips over the pulse I can feel beating. My eyes close as I shift down to his palm and to the one scar we both still bare, the identical scar we both share. I let myself feel the raised skin of scarring that, whether Mike knows it or not, follows the arc of his life line perfectly.

Still moving south, I pull two of his fingers into my mouth, sliding them in and out, flicking at the tips with my tongue. Words, or sounds, start to bubble from Mike’s throat, and I think a couple of them just threatened my favourite thing for Mike to play with, so I’ll be moving right along.

Now would be a good time for the undressing. There’s no art in the way I get Lumpy’s boxers gone from his body, and if it’s possible even less when I make mine disappear over my left shoulder. But we’re both naked, mission accomplished, so who the fuck cares?

I know he’s expecting me to move back upward now. Go back to his neck, and start again. Which is probably why as I shift even further toward his feet, those noises he’s still making now become a fully-fledged whine.

I’m laying with my shoulders between his ankles, my knees curled up underneath me, or the squashing of my cock would be causing me serious pain.

And not that of the fun variety.

My fingers trail through the sparse hair on Mike’s calf muscles, tracing over the lines that I can feel that separate them from the bone. Dropping my head to rest on the pallet, I nudge at the side of his knee until he drags his foot up and it bends before turning to his other leg and getting him to move that one up, too. Now I can pull myself closer to him.

As I drag my teeth along the skin where leg meets groin, my hand gropes blindly for the small cup of slightly watered down shampoo we’ve taken to keeping beside our bed.

Fuck, what I wouldn’t give for real lube right now. Because I will kill myself if this hurts Lumpy.

Mike’s noise has lost any resemblance to any language now and all it does is get louder when my head drops lower, my mouth slipping behind his balls, biting softly at the small patch of skin there.

Oh yeah, and I’ve started humping my own leg.

Tucking the cup between the mattress and the wall, where I’ll probably spill it, but at least I’ll know where to find it in a minute when thinking is beyond me, my now free hand slides up to the concave of Mike’s stomach, rubbing slow circles that match the just as slow flicking of my tongue is doing over any part of his body it can reach.

He whimpered when it was one of his testicles, when it was its mate, I got an almost-mewl. He purred when I went back to the inch of flesh just behind them.

He yelped when I slipped ever lower to lick over his entrance. And while one day I’m going to explore him, that, all of it, a lot more, that’s also when I decide, again, that I need to hurry the hell up.

My head and my hand swap places and now my fingers are tickling flesh, rolling Mike’s balls against each other and against my palm.

And I’m watching Mike’s face. His eyes are squeezed so tightly shut that wrinkles are scored into his forehead. His cheeks are flushed and his mouth is alternating between hanging open and shutting when he sinks his teeth into a very swollen lower lip.

Fuck, he’s beautiful.

“Lumpy?”

His head nods, kind of. It’s more a roll from side to side than a nod.

“Lumpy? Please open your eyes. I’ll let you get away with the nod if you just open your eyes.”

They’re open, sort of. And it so doesn’t fucking help, now that they’re slits that even I can see the heat spilling from.

Oh fuck.

“Ready for more, Lumpy?”

Again with the rolling nod.

“How? Your call. Like this? Or do you want to-“

“This. W-want to see. As-s well as f-feel.”

I couldn’t argue with that if I wanted too.

“Mike? Look at me, please?”

Who knew, that whole smouldering eye thing they mention in romance novels isn’t just bullshit after all.

“You’re already the bravest person I know, so no going stupid on me now. If anything hurts, or it’s not what you want, tell me.”

He starts with the nod.

“Words, Lumpy, please.”

“You can’t hurt me, Sean, not with this, not here, not right this moment.. You don’t have that kind of monster within.”

And I guess as far as he’s concerned, that’s enough said, because now he’s pushing his groin against my stomach.

One of these days, when I think about hurrying up, I’m going to actually do it!

Or not.

The first rub of my bottom lip over the head of his sex smears precum over both of us. And it basically diverts Mike attention from me dipping my fingers into the soapy liquid, swirling them about until they’re completely wet.

Flicking my tongue over the leaking slit there is just for me, because, basically, I’m just a tiny bit addicted to the taste.

Mike doesn’t try to cover the way he jumps at the first touch of my damp fingers, and I’m glad. Good, bad or indifferent, I want his reactions undiluted today. So as one of those fingers starts to play at the edges of his hole, my mouth opens, swallowing the head of Mike’s sex, then closes tight just below the ridge. My tongue rolling firmly across whatever surface it can find.

I don’t even think about entering him until I feel his hips relax, and he sinks an inch or so into the pallet.

And even then, I hesitate.

I hesitate right up until Mike’s hands start twisting hanks of my hair into knots, pushing and pulling at my head.

Hint taken, Lumpy.

My teeth graze over the skin beneath them as one finger twists its way into Mike, just a little before retreating. Just as I push it back in, my mouth starts to slide over Mike’s cock, still not taking more than the head of his sex into my mouth, but making sure he feels the touch, the sensation of my lips, my tongue, my teeth.

Every forward thrust of my finger is matched by a movement of my mouth, just as every retreat is. And every time I push a little deeper into him, move around a little more.

But not quite enough obviously, because the tug of Mike’s hands has my scalp stinging this time. 

“Sean!”

Taking his cock a little deeper into my mouth, a second finger joins the first, and by the time both are completely inside Mike, my nose is buried in the pubic hair at the base of his sex.

Yes, I am playing here, and my mouth continues to play as my fingers continue to fuck him, just waiting for the next pull of my hair.

Though I was expecting there to be more than a second before the movement came.

Easing my head back, pushing against Mike’s clenched fists until they relax and let go, I leave my fingers exactly where they are before kneeling back up, sitting between Mike’s spread thighs. My free hand happily curls around what my mouth reluctantly just left. Because right now I need to see Mike’s face.

“Okay?”

I so don’t have enough blood flow to the brain to form sentences. But I guess the meaning is clear enough, because Mike’s nodding like his head is barely attached to his neck.

“O-okay...C-c’mon Sean, get inside me already. You-you said to tell you...I’m telling you. Enough fucking foreplay! The only hurt I have right now is the one caused by not having you filling me.”

My fingers aren’t inside him any more. They’re smothering soap stuff all over my cock.

Sliding my hands under his thighs leaves him open to me. Completely open to me.

He wants this. He really wants this!

“Yes, I want this! Please, Sean!”

Then I’m there, right where I want to be. My sex pressing into him, my eyes watching for even the smallest flash of pain.

There’s nothing.

But he’s so tight, and with every beat of his heart, his pulse pulls at me.

I am so going to fucking embarrass myself here.

Shifting himself around until I feel like I’m starting to become that extra organ I mentioned early, the rough heels of Mike’s feet are digging into the small of my back, trying to pull me closer, and I don’t think that’s actually possible.

That’s when Mike snarls, “Fuck me!”

And that’s it.

I forget about virgin and gentle and rape. I forget about everything that isn’t involved in us, here, together, moving, pushing us both toward the edge.

The way my name is spilling from Mike’s lips is sounding like anything but a complaint.

His feet press harder, his hands are everywhere, anywhere, their touch doesn’t have a beginning or an end. Leaving one arm braced to keep me somewhat upright, my other can’t curl itself around Mike, wanting him to come with me, needing him to come with me. 

There is no gentle in the way my hand speeds up on his sex, but there is this desperate need to make him feel and as my fist moves faster still, my cock finds the one part of him I desperately needed to touch.

For Mike’s sake. It’s all for Mike’s sake.

“Sean! Harder! More! Fuck! Now! Seannnnnnn!”

I feel his seed in my fingers. I feel my seed spill into him. I hear his name torn from my lips like that one word now possesses my soul.

And yes, I see stars. Fireworks.

I open my eyes.

And I see love. 

~*~

~Epilogue~

“Lumpy!”

Crouched beside him, I’m trying not to shout, but I need to get his attention while I still can before the hidden moon draws my beast out too.

“Mike, don’t fight against it, okay? Just roll with it. It’s okay to give in to it.”

His shoulders pull up, his head raises itself as skin and muscles pull, then shorten or lengthen in ways he never dreamed they could. His eyes turn to mine, pleading for something I know I don’t have the power to give.

Fuck! The tug of the moon is beginning to feel like hands around my throat taking away my ability to breathe. Just a fucking minute bitch! I move back a little to give us both the room we need, all the while talking more nonsense than I can ever remember sprouting before in my fucking life.

“Mike, please, just surrender to it, you can’t defeat it, but it can break you. I don’t want this to hurt you more than it has too. I’m here, I’ll always be here, but only you can do this. Let it take you. I’ll be waiting, I promise.”

The last thing to leave my mouth is more puff of air than word.

Keeping my head up, at least I can watch Mike’s body roll into the incredible being that will be come his second form.

My own body pulls and contorts controlled by wires only something I can’t see can move. But my mind is still mine, and for fuck only knows what reason, suddenly all I can think of is a story Grandma used to tell me. About the shape shifters of her people, of the blessing they thought that ability was. And how the moon that gifted that blessing was to be treated with reverence.

Not called a bitch.

Mike, all black fur and rippling muscle, all strength and love, fills my vision, and I know.

One day. One day, Lumpy, you’re going to bathe in the moon’s light and be touched with her blessing. 


End file.
